[Janet Kenny]

I wish we had a sound system. We could settle it in two ticks.
Brit/English eliding essential to get the beat.
Janet


'is there ANybody THERE?' said the TRAveller,
KNOcking on the MOONlit DOOR;
and his HORSE in the SIlence champed the GRASses
of the FOrest's FERny fLOOR:
and a BIRD flew UP out of the TUrret,
aBOVE the TRAveller's HEAD
and he SMOTE upon the DOOR again a SE-COND TIME;
'is there ANybody THERE?' he SAID.
but NO one deSCENded to the TRAveller;
no HEAD from the LEAF-FRINGED SILL
leaned Over and LOOKED into his GREY EYES,
where he STOOD perPLEXED and STILL.
but Only a HOST of phantom LISTeners
that DWELT in the LONE house THEN
stood LISTening in the QUIET of the MOONlight
to that VOICE from the WORLD of MEN:
stood THRONGing the faint MOONbeams on the DARK STAIR,
that goes DOWN to the EMPty HALL,
HEARKening in an AIR stirred and SHAken
by the LONEly TRAveller's CALL.
and he FELT in his HEART their STRANGEness,
their STILLness ANswering his CRY,
while his HORSE moved, CROPping the DARK TURF,
'neath the STARRED and LEAfy SKY;
for he SUDdenly SMOTE on the DOOR, Even
LOUder, and LIFted his HEAD:-
'TELL them I CAME, and no one ANswered,
that I KEPT my WORD,' he SAID.
NEver the least STIR made the LISTeners,
though Every WORD he SPAKE
fell Echoing through the SHAdowiness of the STILL HOUSE
from the ONE man LEFT aWAKE:
ay, they HEARD his FOOT upon the STIRrup,
and the SOUND of Iron on STONE,
and how the SIlence SURGED softly BACKward,
when the PLUNging HOOFS were GONE.

[Carol Taylor]

Henry, here's how I read the lines in their accentual context:


While his HORSE moved, CROPping the dark TURF,

and

tell them i CAME, and NO one ANswered

The poem is clearly accentual. The question you ask is whether it is accentual trimeter or a combination of accentual trimeter and tetrameter. To me, neither of those two lines makes sense as accentual tetrameter, but they flow naturally as accentual trimeter. Why would you stress TELL or WHILE outside an accentual-syllabic setting?

In an accentual-syllabic setting, I'd read the first line as either pentameter or trimeter, depending on context, and the second as tetrameter:

while his HORSE/ ^ MOVED,/ ^ CROP/ping the DARK/ ^ TURF,/
or
while his HORSE/ moved CROP/ping the DARK TURF (spondee)/

and

TELL them/ i CAME,/ and NO/ one AN/swered (feminine)


I think that rather than trying to support an agenda, whether the agenda is proving that vocal and metrical stress ought to be one and the same or proving that every other syllable has to have some kind of metrical stress, and rather than imposing a reader's own regional dialect or interpretation of content onto his reading, it's the reader's challenge to try to find the poem's intended rhythm; that is, to try to read it as the poet wrote it to be read, always assuming enough skill on the poet's part that he has been able to effect a rhythm and still put across his intended meaning through the words he stresses.

While I find some of de la Mare's lines overwritten, I have no trouble picking up the poem's natural 3-beat rhythm as long as I don't try to force my own scansion on it.

Carol

[Jerry Glenn Hartwig]

Sorry for the double post.

[This message has been edited by Jerry Glenn Hartwig (edited August 21, 2005).]

[Jerry Glenn Hartwig]

I wish we had a sound system

Good idea, and one that might help with the questions I have.

Give me three volunteers: send me a sound file of you reading the poem, and I'll post it online with a link.

Carol? Mark? Henry?

admin@the-buckeye.org

p.s. - For those brave enough, I can post videos, also *grin*

[This message has been edited by Jerry Glenn Hartwig (edited August 21, 2005).]

[Janet Kenny]

Carol,
You and I are in agreement for most of this poem but I do think that de la Mare deliberately breaks the trimeter several times for dramatic emphasis. The effect is still very metric and it works into the flow.
The example below is also onomatopoeic.


and he SMOTE/ upon the DOOR/ again a SE-COND/ TIME; (4)
'is there ANybody THERE?' he SAID. (3)

I do think the American/English difference makes all the difference in this case.
Janet


I've just read all the preceding interpretations of one of the lines. It reminds me of the old actor rehearsing "To be or not to be".



[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited August 21, 2005).]

[Mark Allinson]

Henry, I should have been more specific - asymmetric accentual het-met is what I should have said - a mixed accentual poem, rather than mixed acc-syll, like those you mention.

While it is possible to find four words in some lines that seem to have claim on a stress - that is, those perceived spondaic endings (and why would a writer want to do an ugly thing like that?) - the net result is still a sensation of the three strong beats per line. That is what accentual tri-meter means to me, three BIG BEATS per line. Anyone worried about relative stresses or implied stresses or secondary stresses in accentual verse has missed the point entirely. THREE BIG BEATS, three main pulses, is all you need. Those perceived spondaic endings, such "DARK STAIR", and "GREY EYES", seem too heavy-handed in a context of a dozen natural feminine endings. In whatever configuration, I hear them as a single beat - "greyeyes", "darkstair" - not "grey ... eyes" and " dark ... stair". A light touch, in the reading as much as in the writing, is the secret to accentual verse. Stress sensitivity, picked up over decades of IP training, might actually prove a disability when reading accentuals - finding words which might be significant stresses in an IP context, but have no bearing in an accentual poem.

Henry, it's true, I do often contradict myself in my explanations of how I hear what I hear. Mainly because I am experimenting with explanations, since I have no idea how I hear what I do. I am trying to work backwards, from practice to theory. But since actual practice, in reading and in writing, is the important thing, I don't mind if my theory is still somewhat inchoate.




------------------
Mark Allinson

[Henry Quince]

Glad to see you don’t read “STILL house” etc, Janet.

Posting sound files would get us nowhere, Jerry. We’d just be arguing about whether the scansions were an accurate mapping of the stress — which they wouldn’t be.

If others think suppressing the speech stress on a main, imperative verb like TELL in “TELL them I CAME...” or on other main content words in a line is a natural reading, I’m content that we agree to differ. I wish I hadn’t put any time and energy into this fruitless argument, and I’m certainly not going to put in any more.

Henry



[This message has been edited by Henry Quince (edited August 21, 2005).]

[Scott Rowley]

Hello everyone,

I think that one thing that is getting lost in this discussion is the function of phrasing in accentual meter. It is not that there has to be only two stressed syllables in a line, but that there has to be one highest peak in each phrase. This is how Larkin does it, and I think this is why his poem works better. If I am correct, the lines that break the rule against three unpromoted syllables in a row break easily in two. While the lines that won’t break easily in two don’t break the rule. So even if you read: "THERE is an AIR of GREAT FRIENDliness." The line still breaks into two parts with two highest peaks on "air" and "friend." The line itself takes on an expansive and overall ascending feel, with a two-syllable release after “friend.” The line is a perfect sound-picture of Larkin’s meaning. It is expansive and down to earth. If it didn’t match his meaning so well it wouldn’t work. The point is, and Dana Gioia makes this point in an essay on his website, that accentual meters work best when the author tries to avoid metrical ambiguity, or when the author writes accentuals that flow naturally in speech. I think that that is why accentual meters usually break into groups of two.

On the other hand I kind of like what de le Mare has done:

Stood thronging /the faint moonbeams /on the dark stair,

So you could say this line with six stresses: stood, throng, faint, moon, dark, and stair. But it still can break into three parts with one peak each on throng, moon, and dark even with those other stresses. I actually like de la Mare’s pattern a lot. It’s kind of sublime in it’s ambitions. But I don’t think he establishes his pattern as clearly as Larkin.

Am I not right?

Scott.

p.s.
To borrow some lines from AE: (The divisions are mine)
LEG-of-mutton / SLEEVES

some CAper / a few STEPS

and of great SADness / ALso
(in this line the also is an addendum, not as essential to the meaning of the phrase and so it break easily there)

as if the NAME / meant ONCE

I think in all 4 of these lines one is initially inclined to force the rhythm into a "legal" accentual-syllabic pattern:

leg-of-MUTon SLEEVES

some CAper a FEW steps

and of GREAT sadness ALso

as IF the name MEANT once

The strenth of accentual-syllabics is that it gives more of a driving sense to each word. In accentual meters the rythm moves more in phrases. I don't think it works to only stress the highest points with, but rather to read naturally dividing the motion of the sounds into groups around the highest stresses. If the accents don't flow somewhat naturally, then the accentual meter isn't very valid. You win or lose the reader based on how normative you can make the pattern for him/her without being boring.

Here is Gioia's website. He doesn't mention phrasing. But he does mention metrical ambiguity:
http://www.danagioia.net/essays/eaccentual.htm After you read this, go back and read Micheal Juster's poem again. It's quite beautiful.

Scott.

[Mark Granier]

Carol,
I suspect the meter isn't as clear-cut as as consistent accentual trimeter, and I think if you try to read it as such you run into problems and stumble on those longer lines, which is probably part of the reason some people here have trouble with them; for example when you try to read the deliberately peculiar word "champed" as unstressed. De le Mare may have used something like accentual trimeter to get the framework, but I feel that part of the power in this poem is the way it alternates trimeter with tetrameter,and even, possibly, pentameter (but I won't try to push that one). I may be completely wrong of course; this is just how it sounds to me, when I read it to myself. I was wondering how the man himself might have read it and I actually have a recording of poets that includes three De la Mare poems, but not, unfortunately The Listeners. Interesting to hear him though, a rather nasal, posh, 1930/40s Brit accent, an early BBC voice, but pleasant enough, and not overly mechanical at all.

Anyway, this is how I hear it the accents in my head:


Is there ANYbody THERE?' said the TRAveller,
KNOCKing on the MOONlit DOOR;
And his HORSE in the SIlence CHAMPED the GRAsses
Of the FORest's FERny FLOOR:
And a BIRD flew up OUT of the TURret,
aBOVE the TRAveller's HEAD
And he SMOTE upon the DOOR aGAIN a SECond time;
'Is there ANYbody THERE?' he SAID.
But NO one desCENded to the TRAveller;
No HEAD from the LEAF-fringed SILL
Leaned OVer and LOOKED into his grey EYES,
Where he STOOD perPLEXED and STILL.
But ONly a HOST of PHANtom LISteners
That DWELT in the LONE house THEN
Stood LIStening in the QUIET of the MOONlight
To that VOICE from the WORLD of MEN:
Stood THRONGing the faint MOONbeams on the DARK stair,
That goes DOWN to the EMpty HALL,
HEARKening in an air STIRRED and SHAken
By the LONely TRAveller's CALL.
And he FELT in his HEART their STRANgeness,
Their STILLness ANswering his CRY,
While his horse MOVED, CROPping the dark TURF,
'Neath the STARRED and LEAfy SKy;
For he SUDdenly SMOTE on the DOOR, even
LOUDer, and LIFted his HEAD:-
'TELL them i CAME, and NO one ANswered,
That I KEPT my WORD,' he SAID.
NEVer the least STIR made the LISteners,
Though EVery WORD he SPAKE
Fell EChoing through the SHADowiness of the STILL house
From the ONE man LEFT aWAKE:
AY, they HEARD his FOOT upon the STIRrup,
And the SOUND of IRON on STONE,
And how the SIlence SURGED SOFtly BACkward,
When the PLUNging HOOFS were GONE.

Mark, thanks for putting that poem before me again, and for the pleasure I got from reading it through once more.

[This message has been edited by Mark Granier (edited August 22, 2005).]

[Janet Kenny]

If a good poem doesn't conform to the rules--then suspect the rules. The law is often an ass.
Janet