[Curtis Gale Weeks]

This thread has taken an interesting turn, one I would support with my own observations. Meter is so mechanical in operation, whereas rhythm is quite fluid--in general. Could an analogy with rivers be made, that meter is the banks the poem follows while rhythm is the particular flow of the water between the banks? So that the two combined make up the action of a poem-on-the-whole? In any case...choice of rhythm does seem to be personal, as R. mentions, although I think we could distinguish different rhythmic methods. Some poets (or, should that be "poems"?) display a greater fondness for demotions, a greater fondness for promotions, a fondness for utilizing both equally, or perhaps no particular fondness for either while making the choice to add substitutions to a poem for the creation of interesting rhythms--and of course, this is a bit simplistic, because so many "shades" of rhythm can be created by the combination of these within a poem at various points: the warp and woof of meter, the density/composition of threads, combinations of these things?

Curtis.

[Jerry Glenn Hartwig]

Roger

Well said.

[robert mezey]

A few last remarks, and then I'm hanging up my lariat. Getting too old for this wrangling. But here is a letter (which I'm sure most of you must know) from Samuel Johnson to Lord Chesterfield, one of the masterpieces of prose. Lord C. never gave Dr. Johnson a dime during all those years he was working in poverty, and then tried to horn in on his fame. It's well to remember that Johnson was a commoner writing to a great lord, and indeed he does employ some of the conventional deferences and submissive gestures, with devastating irony. The serene anger and contempt of this prose, the dignity, are beyond praise. I should add that although Chesterfield was a cynical arrogant sonofabitch, he did have a taste for good writing and had the nerve to display Johnson's letter in his drawing room for his guests to read.
I'm typing it out from memory, so there may be a few small errors, and I don't follow Johnson's punctuation or use of capitals.

My Lord,
I have been lately informed by the proprietor of The World that two papers, in which my dictionary is recommemded to the public, were written by your Lordship. To be so distinguished is an honor, which, being very little accustomed to favors from the great, I know not well how to receive or in what terms to acknowledge.
When upon some slight encouragement I first visited your Lordship, I was overpowered like the rest of mankind by the enchantment of your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself "le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre," but I found my attendance so little encouraged that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. When I had first addressed your Lordship in public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could, and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever little.
Seven years, my Lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward rooms or was repulsed from your door, during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficuties of which it is useless to complain, and brought it at last to the verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treatment I did not expect, for I had never had a patron before.
The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love and found him a native of the rocks.
Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water and when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind, but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it, till I am solitary and cannot impart it, till I am known and do not want it.
I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligation where no benefit has been received or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed should I conclude it, if less be possible, with less, for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope
in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation, my Lord,
Your Lordship's most humble,
most obedient servant,
Sam. Johnson


(I don't know if all those paragraphs and salutations will print out correctly--I lack the skill to make them do so.)
I don't think I need to go into much detail about it, but
this is a masterpiece of rhetoric and prose rhythm, and it is the rhythm, more than anything, that has kept it in my memory for 50 years or so. Of course some phrases and sentences do fall into one metrical line or another by sheer accident, but there is no meter, obviously--this is all rhythm; of course Johnson is very attentive to the sounds of vowels and consonants, and to the various rhetorical structures, but they are inseparable from the rhythms. One gorgeous example is that triple phrasing that narrows at the
end to monosyllables: "but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it, till I am solitary and cannot impart it, till I am known and do not want it." Hard for prose to be more expressive than this. You will all hear the rhymical delicacy and power of these sentences, but there is obviously no meter. Meter is a rhythm too, of course, but abstract, very regular and repetitive, not like the rhythms of the real world and of living things, and almost immediately boring until it is brought into close contact (I almost wrote close combat) with words, with speech. A good verser has that rhythm so deeply in his ear that he can play endless variations on it without losing it. It's something like the way Billie Holiday could sing, her expressiveness and personal emotion sometimes making the words come a fraction before the beat or a fraction late-- but the beat is always there. And you realize that you are not hearing the beat AND the phrases (unless you are listening analytically for them), but as in verse, you're hearing one thing, that is different from either, that arises from their constant dueling and dancing. Does that make sense? Here is another passage, this time in verse. As marvelous and poetic as Johnson's letter is, it cannot get the kind of complexity and expressiveness that great poetry can, as he would have been the first to admit, being no mean poet himself. This is Frost, and he is so confident and masterly, so "in the zone," that he can even leave one line metrically "defective" and use that "defect" to tremendous effect. It's worth taking the time to copy out the whole thing. I won't comment on its many beauties; you will all hear, I think, how rich and natural the rhythms are, how like real speech, how varied, how full of tone, some lines with perhaps seven strongly stressed syllables, some with only three or four, and yet hear under it all the meter, continuous, always perfectly there (except in the one line where he doesn't want it), and finally the two things making the one thing, the whole sound of the poem.


"OUT, OUT--"

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap--
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand,
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all--
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart--
He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off--
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then--the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little--less--nothing!--and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.


The long sentences winding through and over the lines, and
then the series of very short ones, and the heartbreaking enjambments, the pauses placed just right, ah God, don't get me started. (And please don't think that the other people,
those in the last line-and-a-half, are indifferent or not
suffering deep grief.)
I don't imagine that this settles the theoretical question of meter and rhythm, or verse and speech, but it's a lot of food for thought.
Farewell.


\

[Golias]

Many thanks, Bob, for this excellent lesson and these two fine illustrations. Both were familiar to me, and I expect to others here, but your commentary gives a new dimension to the way one appreciates them and their like.

Thanks, also, for working this stint as guest lariat. It's been great.

Keep in touch...

W.

[Roger Slater]

Mr. M, thanks for posting that poem. Though I love Frost, this isn’t a poem I had ever paused long enough to notice and appreciate. It’s quite wonderful, though baffling to me in terms of its metrics. As I go through it, there are several lines I don’t really know how to scan though I think I know how to say them. It also strikes me (perhaps incorrectly) that Frost is using ionic figures quite a bit (pyhrric-spondee pairs, if you will), which give a sort of anapestic flavor but are not the same as anapests.

I offer some comments on some of the lines that most confused me. I acknowledge in advance that I likely missed the mark quite a bit, but I’m hopeful that I’ll learn something when I am corrected.


And MADE DUST and dropped STOVE-length STICKS of WOOD

We were discusing on the “loose iambics” thread the use of trochaic substitutions without a caesura to set it up. Here it seems we have another example in the second foot.

Perhaps the rhythm/meter tension here is the way “dropped” and “length” end up not taking a metrical beat even though they are strong words that claim a fair amount of emphasis in ordinary speech (one syllable words of six and seven letters).


SWEET-scented STUFF when the BREEZE drew aCROSS it.

My scansion yields only four beats. But perhaps I should be giving “drew” a beat as well, with “when the breeze drew” as an ionic?

And the SAW SNARLED and RATTled, SNARLED and RATTled

anapest-trochee-trochee-trochee-trochee? Or ionic-iamb-iamb-iamb (plus hypermetric tag)?

To PLEASE the BOY by GIVing him the HALF HOUR

I give up. I wish someone would comment here to let me know what’s happening.

That a BOY COUNTS so MUCH when SAVED from WORK.

The line starts with an ionic, then switches to iambs?

Leaped OUT at the BOY’S HAND, or SEEMED to LEAP–

iamb-ionic-iamb-iamb?

As he SWUNG TOWARD them HOLDing UP the HAND

Pronouncing “toward” as one-syllable, as I believe the line demands, we end up with an ionic to start the line.

So. But the hand was gone already.

I take it that this is the line that is deliberately not pentameter. The missing hand is registered in the missing foot. (Sorry). The next two lines turn into smoothly regular IP, as if to switch to a different plane. We are now seeing things through the doctor’s eyes, not the boy’s. The boy has left us now, dead a line or two before his death is explicitly reported.

LITTle–LESS–NOTHing!--and THAT ENDed it.

I don’t know how to describe this line. The line ending is particularly strange.

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

R.,

I more-than-less agree that poets intend one reading even if multiple readings of a line might be possible--that there is one best way to read a line. I'm still trying to "hear" how the first syllable of "about" can be accented over the last syllable...which only means that my own ear might not "hear" in the way a master's might hear. [This last is in reference to a different thread...] The Frost lines certainly are loose; how am I to know how Frost intended them? The whole subject is quite frustrating for me. I tend to "hear" this in the first three lines of that poem:

The BUZZ saw SNARLED and RATtled IN the YARD
And MADE dust and DROPPED STOVE-length STICKS of WOOD,
Sweet-SCENTed STUFF when the BREEZE DREW aCROSS it.

--so I "hear" ionics in the second and third lines, which give the lines a swing. The second line continues an accent pattern on the verbs (the action of the saw), especially also because this continues the iambic pattern of L1 into the first foot of the second line. To what degree are strong stresses demoted in these lines in adherence to an iambic meter? I can force a reading that is strictly iambic, but I can't really "hear" it without difficulty. I understand what Mr. Mezey's saying about strong stresses falling a bit short of the beat or a bit after the beat; but my ear struggles to accept that in every potential instance in these lines.

Ah well.

C.

[robert mezey]

A last quick reply. Your scansion's mostly right. But surely
"dust" must be accented, no? That's one of those abrupt trochees in the second foot (and not after a caesura). There is an ionic in the third line (and a fair number of other ionics throughout the poem) but not in the second line. Here's my scansion, in my notation, which I assume everyone understands by now. (The second line's the one with seven
strongly stressed syllables!)

o S o S o S o s o S

o S S o O S O S o S

S O o S o o S S o S (o)

Is that clear? And I'd have to disagree that there's anything loose about this poem--it is in strict iambics from beginning to end, except for that one short line, the four- beater. Not one extra syllable that's not accounted for by elision. You couldn't write stricter blank verse; more regular, maybe, but not stricter. One lovely thing worth pointing out: notice the feminine ending in "To please the boy by giving him the half hour" --it's even stronger than the accented "half"! As far as I know, that's one of Frost's several brilliant additions to iambic prosody. I can't think of earlier examples; if any of you know of one, please tell me. Another example of that kind of feminine ending in Frost: "Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day." Another great innovation of Frost's does appear in
earlier poetry but only very rarely: the substitution of two anapests for three iambs. The last 25 or 30 lines of "A Servant to Servants" is full of such lines. For example,
two lines in a row: "And I looked to be happy, and I was, /
As I said, for a while--but I don't know!" You could scan
them iambically, I suppose, but what for? they are really anapests. Another example, where the last six syllables can't be anything but two anapests: "Other folks have to, and why shouldn't I?" There are probably a few other such lines in the tradition, but very few; the only one I can think of, offhand, is one of Milton's, from "Paradise Lost"--"Burned after them to the bottomless pit." But Frost made it a permissible substitution! Don't try it at home unless you know what you're doing. (You know that Frost is doing something really good and original when he does it twice in a row, as in the two lines above--he wants you to know that HE knows exactly what he's done. A show-off, yes, but when you're that good, you get a a free pass.) There are a couple of other marvelous innovations in his stuff, but enough.

[Roger Slater]

Mr. M, your remarks raise a lot of questions for me, but I'll limit myself to just one for now. Why do you say this line has a feminine ending?:

Out WALKing IN the FROZen SWAMP one gray day

I didn't mark the last beat because I can't figure out where it belongs. It's as if "gray" and "day" were sharing a beat. But I can't see why "day" should be regarded as an unstressed, feminine ending. If "gray day" were "summer", then the feminine ending would be clear, but how can "gray day" substitute for a trochaic word like "summer"?

Thanks.

PS-- One other question. It seems that both Curtis and I "hear" lots of ionics in the Frost piece. Do you agree that there are many ionics? If so, does this mean that the IP is not "strict"? Or does strict IP include ionics?

Thanks.



[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited January 14, 2003).]

[Tim Murphy]

Roger, Bob's on leave. It is one GRAY day because the line's an eleven, and that's the only way to read it and scan it. Hence, Feminine. Yes there lots of ionics, perfectly permissable in strict IP. Check out Yeats' All Soul's Night.

[robert mezey]

Tim's right. "day" is a feminine ending, period, but a strongly stressed syllable, like "hour" in "Out, Out", also a f.e. and stressed (though not accented). RF likes to do it and does it well. And ionics are one of the permissible
substitutions, like trochees, and are found all over the place in strict iambics, sometimes one after another, as in these
lines of Yeats, whom Tim mentioned:

Better go down upon your marrow bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement or break stones o o S S
Like an old pauper in all kinds of weather... o o S S o o S S

3 in a row, no?

so long