Eratosphere Forums - Metrical Poetry, Free Verse, Fiction, Art, Critique, Discussions Able Muse - a review of poetry, prose and art

Forum Left Top

Notices

Reply
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Unread 08-07-2001, 01:20 AM
Caleb Murdock Caleb Murdock is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: New York City
Posts: 797
Post

Many of you know that I have mixed feelings about Hardy, feeling that a lot of his verse is clumsy. However, I'm not posting this poem to attack him, as this is a poem I like a great deal.

I'll explain the numbers later:


In Church

"And now to God the Father", he ends, (I-3/A-1)
And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles: (I-2/A-2)
Each listener chokes as he bows and bends, (I-3/A-1)
And emotion pervades the crowded aisles. (I-2/A-2)
Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door, (I-2/A-2)
And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more. (I-2/A-2)

The door swings softly ajar meanwhile, (I-3/A-1)
And a pupil of his in the Bible class, (I-1/A-3)
Who adores him as one without gloss or guile, (I-1/A-3)
Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile (I-1/A-3)
And re-enact at the vestry-glass (I-3/A-1)
Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show (I-3/A-1)
That had moved the congregation so. (I-3/A-1)

Thomas Hardy


The meter is interesting. Is it iambic tetrameter, or anapestic tetrameter? I'm not sure. 6 lines have 3 iambs and 1 anapest, 4 lines have 2 of each, and 3 lines have 1 iamb and 3 anapests. It's hard to tell which one is the base meter and which the variation, especially since the anapests can occur at either the beginning or end of the line. Another interesting thing is that the poem appears to be a 13-line sonnet, though the stanzas are broken into 6 and 7 lines.

I must say that I am curious to hear what some of you hard-nosed, Hardy-loving metrists have to say about a poem that has 29 iambs and 23 anapests. (If the iambs are the base meter, that means that 44% of the poem is variations.)

Line 10 is a total stopper for me. Here is how I scan it:

sees her I / dol STAND / with a SAT / is fied SMILE

However, I naturally want to put an emphasis on the first syllable ("Sees"), and once I do, the whole line is thrown off terribly, as the tendency is then to read the first 6 syllables as 3 trochees.

Any comments?

------------------
Caleb
www.poemtree.com



[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited August 07, 2001).]
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Unread 08-07-2001, 05:15 AM
Alan Sullivan Alan Sullivan is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2000
Location: South Florida, US
Posts: 6,536
Post

G'd morning, Caleb. I would call this anapestic verse, because the anapest becomes, in sufficient numbers, and in the absence of other substitutions, the signature foot--the characteristic departure from the iambic norm in this poem.

I think Hardy relies on the anapestic momentum being sufficient to override any stress on "sees." I agree the line would be an unpleasant one if a reader took it otherwise. In our time, with fewer metrically sophisticated readers, it might be unwise to craft a line like this.

Alan Sullivan
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Unread 08-07-2001, 06:46 AM
A. E. Stallings A. E. Stallings is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2000
Location: Athens, Greece
Posts: 3,205
Post

This seems rather a slight poem for Hardy (whom I love), though charming and accomplished.

I'd agree this is basically anapestic (iambic substitutions, particularly at ends of lines, seem to be fairly common in such a meter--takes some of the sing-songy edge off without losing the swing). Hardy is, of course, both a very skilled and very adventurous metrist. "Sees" doesn't bother me much, coming late as it does, after the rhythm is firmly established. (Perhaps we are too used to running across contemporaries' headless iambic lines that try to start on monosyllables.) While I appreciate Alan's sobering point, I'd have to say I tend to disagree with the suggestion that we might be somehow more metrically limited in what we can pull off than Hardy by the lack of sophistication of our readers.

Much of Hardy's verse IS "clumsy"--but deliberately so, not through accidental ineptitude. Hardy disliked too much smoothness and polish (a fault, he felt, of much well-turned but aetiolated Victorian verse), and strove for the appearance of a certain spontanaity. He talks about leaving the rough edges on. (Who else could get away with "powerfuller"?) I'm a bit curious, Caleb, about your reaction to Hardy. I'd have thought from other discussions you'd be quite sympathetic to such a stance.

Thanks very much for posting this enjoyable piece.


Alicia

Reply With Quote
  #4  
Unread 08-07-2001, 12:38 PM
robert mezey robert mezey is offline
Master of Memory
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Claremont CA USA
Posts: 570
Post

It's not exactly iambic or anapestic,
but a mixture. Four-beat lines, what Frost
would have called loose iambic. Once you
hear the measure (which should be about at
the end of line 1), you hear it easily all
the way through. "Sees" in line 10 should
cause no problem at all---for Hardy, that's
a normal anapest. (You'd make things easier
for yourself, Caleb, if you didn't break all
the lines down into feet. Hardy, like any
other poet, is not composing in feet, but in
lines, and he knows, and expects the reader
to know when the meter has been fulfilled in
every line.) If you want to see Hardy doing
amazing things with anapests, read "The Missed
Train" (and, if you have the book, the brief
metrical analysis in the Introduction, p. xxix,
beginning, "Ransom said that no poet understood
the function of meter better than Hardy and had
the highest praise for the sureness and delicacy
of his ear and his fresh way with the meters").

Reply With Quote
  #5  
Unread 08-07-2001, 04:54 PM
Caleb Murdock Caleb Murdock is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: New York City
Posts: 797
Post

So, Alan, you are saying that anapestic meter doesn't have to be as strict as iambic meter?

Alicia, my problem with Hardy -- many of his poems but certainly not all of them -- is primarily about clumsy word choices, not unusual rhythms. Also, I don't find in his poetry the flow that I associate with excellent poetry, not even as much flow as I see in, say, Kate Benedict's work, or in your work or Tim's or Michael's or Alan's. However, this poem doesn't have any clumsy choices to speak of, which is one of the reasons I like it and have put it on my site; but I've read other Hardy poems which really jarred me -- I even analyzed one in an article for my site, though the article is unfinished and not yet posted. I'll post that poem here, if you like.

Robert, I don't know what it means to compose "in lines". I also don't see why I shouldn't have broken the lines down into feet -- that's what metrical poetry analysis is supposed to be about: analyzing rhythms by breaking the lines into feet.

I agree that it's probably because I'm used to reading headless iambs and trochees at the beginnings of lines that line 10 is such a stopper for me -- once I started taking the emphasis off of "Sees" there was no longer a problem.



[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited August 07, 2001).]
Reply With Quote
  #6  
Unread 08-07-2001, 06:18 PM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
Lariat Emeritus
 
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Fargo ND, USA
Posts: 13,816
Post

Robert, Caleb has both your Selected Poems of Thomas Hardy and your Selected Robinson. I gave them to him in the hopes that he would post some of their poems on poemtree.com, which he did. This was part of yours truly's missionary work on behalf of great poetry, but preaching to the heathen is a difficult and never-ending task.
Reply With Quote
  #7  
Unread 08-07-2001, 07:09 PM
Caleb Murdock Caleb Murdock is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: New York City
Posts: 797
Post

How nice. I get called a heathen even though I posted 11 poems by Hardy and 10 poems by Robinson. I didn't say that I hate everything that they wrote.
Reply With Quote
  #8  
Unread 08-08-2001, 01:32 AM
A. E. Stallings A. E. Stallings is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2000
Location: Athens, Greece
Posts: 3,205
Post

Actually, Caleb, it is precisely the diction and syntax that Hardy deliberately left the rough edges on, not, of course, his meters. For instance, he says, in one preface, "Whenever an ancient and legitimate word of the district for which there was no equivalent in received English, suggested itself as the most natural, nearest, and often only expression of a thought, it has been made use of, on what seemed good grounds." (Actually, this could as well be a preface to Seamus Heaney's work...) Anyway, I think Hardy will grow on you.

Mezey is merely saying that poets COMPOSE in lines rather than feet (and so are not so deliberate/conscious about "substitutions" etc., as a statistical analysis might suggest). This is surely true. Analysis and composition are opposite processes. We lack much in the way of good alternatives to the Greek terms, which bring so much baggage with them, so they must suffice. Even the very useful & much-needed term "loose iambics" (a Frost coinage?) seems to me somewhat misleadling. Perhaps this should be called a "swinging tetrameter" or somesuch.

Alicia
Reply With Quote
  #9  
Unread 08-08-2001, 02:43 PM
Caleb Murdock Caleb Murdock is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: New York City
Posts: 797
Post

I guess it's just a matter of taste. I do like many Hardy poems, but none of them has become a favorite in the way that, say, Robinson's "Dear Friends" has become a favorite. There's a smoothness and sophistication in that poem which is nowhere to be found in any of Hardy's work, even in his most famous poem about the thrush (I forgot what it's called). Actually, this simple poem by Hardy has become a favorite, but it doesn't "send me" like some other poems I've read:

Expectation and Experience

"I had a holiday once," said the woman--
~~ Her name I did not know--
"And I thought that where I'd like to go,
Of all the places for being jolly,
And getting rid of melancholy,
~~ Would be to a good big fair:
And I went. And it rained in torrents, drenching
Every horse, and sheep, and yeoman,
~~ And my shoulders, face, and hair;
And I found that I was the single woman
~~ In the field—and looked quite odd there!
Everything was spirit-quenching:
I crept and stood in the lew of a wall
To think, and could not tell at all
~~ What on earth made me plod there!"

I understand why you like Hardy, Alicia, as there seems to be a little Hardy in you, as in this poem of yours which most certainly has become a favorite of mine:

Consolation for Tamar
on the occasion of her breaking
an ancient pot


You know I am no archeologist, Tamar,
And that to me it is all one dust or another.
Still, it must mean something to survive the weather
Of the Ages--earthquake, flood, and war--

Only to shatter in your very hands.
Perhaps it was gravity, or maybe fated--
Although I wonder if it had not waited
Those years in drawers, aeons in distant lands,

And in your fingers' music, just a little
Was emboldened by your blood, and so forgot
That it was not a rosebud, but a pot,
And, trying to unfold for you, was brittle.

Alicia E. Stallings

This poem of yours (which I hope you don't mind that I posted) has more sophisticated and interesting syntax than I find in most Hardy poems. In a way, I feel that you do Hardy better than Hardy does. You speak plainly, using familiar speech patterns and phrasing, but with more elegance.

Just taking a look at the last stanza alone, I find it filled with unique and memorable phrases: "your fingers' music", "Was emboldened by your blood", "forgot/That it was not a rosebud", and "trying to unfold for you, was brittle". A memorable phrase in every line! There's not a wasted word in this entire poem -- it's just wonderful.

------------------
Caleb
www.poemtree.com



[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited August 08, 2001).]
Reply With Quote
  #10  
Unread 08-08-2001, 05:02 PM
MacArthur MacArthur is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.
Posts: 1,314
Post

Decided to give Hardy another pass today. Of course, no Mezey edition at Powell's. One by Ransom though. The Intro was interesting. Ransom's kinda tough on this one, though I really like the theme:

Wives in the Sere

Never a careworn wife but shows,
If a joy suffuse her,
Something beautiful to those
Patient to peruse her,
Some one charm the world unknows
Precious to a muser,
Haply what, ere years were foes,
Moved her mate to choose her.

But, be it a hint of rose
That in a instant hues her,
Or some early light or pose
Wherewith thought renews her -
Seen by him at full, ere woes
Practiced to abuse her -
Sparely comes, swifly goes,
Time again subdues her.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Bookmarks

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump



Forum Right Top
Forum Left Bottom Forum Right Bottom
 
Right Left
Member Login
Forgot password?
Forum LeftForum Right


Forum Statistics:
Forum Members: 8,399
Total Threads: 21,839
Total Posts: 270,784
There are 2352 users
currently browsing forums.
Forum LeftForum Right


Forum Sponsor:
Donate & Support Able Muse / Eratosphere
Forum LeftForum Right
Right Right
Right Bottom Left Right Bottom Right

Hosted by ApplauZ Online