[Brian Watson]

Investiture at Cecconi's
for David Kalstone

Caro, that dream (after the diagnosis)
found me losing patience outside the door of
"our" Venetian tailor. I wanted evening
clothes for the new year.

Then a bulb went on. The old woman, she who
stitches dawn to dusk in his back room, opened
one suspicious inch, all the while exclaiming
over the late hour--

Fabrics? patterns? those the proprietor must
show by day, not now -- till a lightning insight
cracks her face wide: Ma! the Signore's here to
try on his new robe!

Robe? She nods me onward. The mirror tryptich
summons three bent crones she diffracted into
back from no known space. They converge by magic,
arms full of moonlight.

Up my own arms glistening sleeves are drawn. Cool
silk in grave, white folds--Oriental mourning--
sheathes me, throat to ankles. I turn to face her,
uncomprehending.

Thank your friend, she cackles, the Professore!
Wonderstruck I sway, like a tree of tears. You--
miles away, sick, fearful-- have yet arranged this
heartstopping present.

... -- James Merrill

~~

A tremendous poem. The triple reflection of the woman from the three-paned mirror brings to mind the Parcae, an image that retrospectively lends dual meaning to "she who stitches dawn to dusk," for if the old woman stitches from dawn until dusk Nona in a sense stitches dawn and dusk together. "Back from no known space" recalls the mirror in an earlier poem by that name who eerily "suspect[s] looks from behind, where nothing is..."

The companion piece to Investiture at Cecconi's is another Sapphic ode, Farewell Performance, about the scattering of DK's ashes. Two more sapphics appear earlier in The Inner Room, David's Watercolor and Arabian Night, and those are the only four I know of.

As much as I admire Investiture at Cecconi's and its companion piece, in general I don't entirely "get" Sapphic meter. I don't feel the meter, probably in part for lack of exposure to it, in part for its complexity. I was wondering if those who like Sapphics could articulate its appeal. Is there a particular mood native to this meter? What makes a poet chose this form for a given poem?

[Maryann Corbett]

I remember with perfect clarity finding this in Merrill's collected, which I had out of the library. I remember that I didn't recognize the meter as sapphics until at least the second, perhaps not until the third, reading. And I love sapphics and write a lot (maybe too many) of them.

So why didn't I see it right away?

Merrill is a lot more free with the sapphic meter that I am--I'm a late comer to the classical meters and am rather poundingly absolute with them. Merrill varies and substitutes (CARo, that DREAM is how I hear it, rather than CA ro THAT DREAM, as the rules would dictate).

And some of his wordings can be stressed more than one way--you know how he wants them heard once you know he intends sapphics. ("CLOTHES for the NEW year" is one example.) He allows lots of long pauses, which interrupt the flow.

He also doesn't seem to object to ending lines on prepositions or relative pronouns, something I generally tell beginners not to do--because it's too easy to do too often.

This may not seem to answer your question directly, but I think that you might "feel" sapphics less in this piece because that meter is, if you will, rather lightly applied to these words.

What I learn from this poem is how little I know about what sapphics can do! They often have a pounding sensation, but these lines don't pound.

They also have a constant forward motion, because every line ends with an unstressed syllable, followed by the next line's beginning stressed syllable. I think these line-ending prepositions show that propelled-forward feeling.

And they're good at isolating and focusing attention on the meanings of the words in the adonic, the short last line. In this poem I especially love the tight focus on "heartstopping present." You can feel the heart stop.

Those are great observations you make about the Parcae allusion and the "stitches dawn to dusk" image. I hope others have more to say, and other poems to quote.

Editing back to add a link to"Farewell Performance"

[Brian Watson]

Thank you Maryann. I see (hear, rather) what you mean about the propelled-forward quality of the Sapphic stanzas. And the emphasis thrown onto the short line.

Yes, that iamb in the second foot of the first line leads me to expect a line of IP. I've also noticed, in my admitedly microscopic experience reading Sapphics, that sometimes the initial trochee is very weak, and the line can end up sounding more like ooX oX ooX oX o than Xo Xo Xoo Xo Xo.

[John Whitworth]

Twenty five years ago I wrote a piece of Light Verse (which is also a love poem) in a metre derived (loosely I admit) from the sapphic metre. It goes like this:

Fretting my heart as you pedal your bicycle,
Perdita, once I called, Perdita, twice I called,
Pretty as paint and as cool as an icicle,
Perdita Simmons!

Well 'derived' is what I said. But I think the classical metres are there for us all to plunder and escape the tyranny of the iamb. You can find the whole poem (should you wish to) by googling Perdita Simmons. The girl is real (and still alive and still very pretty) , by the way, though she was never called Perdita Simmons.

[Brian Watson]

I think it was you, john, who observed that the Victorians were far more adventurous than we are with metres. I've not read much Victorian poetry, but I do like Merrill for his intricate nonce forms, and Larkin for his dimeters and trimeters, which, though they're still iambic, are a change from IP.

I remember reading Perdita Simmons on the Wondering Minstrels, a site with reliable tastes.

[Janice D. Soderling]

I love that "I Wish I Were a Wave of the Sea", John. I admired it long before I admired you. There is a bit of a ping-pong effect now.

[John Whitworth]

The line is misquoted on the net. It should be 'I wish you a wave of the sea' which is from 'The Winter's Tale'. I saw it whenn I was about twenty. A very beautiful red-haired girl called Jane Asher, who was Paul McCartney's girlfriend, played Perdita. Laurence Harvey was Leontes and was actually not bad. SHE was divine. The line refers to her and goes in full, 'When you dance I wish you a wave of the sea'. Isn't William GREAT? Autolycus was Jim Dale which will mean nothing at all to anyone not a devotee of the English Carry-On films.

[peterjb]

I think the reason it might not be easy to "feel" the meter here is simply that it's unclear, whether by accident or design. Sapphics in their English accentual adaptation seem to me not very tolerant of variation. The preferred template, and the one closest to the original Greek as I understand it (not that I have any scholarly credentials whatever in these matters), is this:

/-/-/--/-/-
/-/-/--/-/-
/-/-/--/-/-
/--/-

I know the last syllable in each line was an anceps (swinging either way) in the Greek, but in English the feminine endings seem to make for a more recognizable meter.

Merrill's poem above follows this template only roughly, and unless you already have the sapphic pattern in your mind, you could miss the meter. Maybe not in the final stanza, but most of the way through. Whether this is good or bad depends on your point of view. Possibly a muted, non-obvious meter was his intention. You can do anything you want, of course. It seems a pity to me, though, to take what's a pleasing template and then deliberately blur or subvert it.

Swinburne apparently "invented" sapphics in English, and his poem of that name follows the template pretty closely. Much easier to hear the meter than in the Merrill.

All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids,
Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather,
Yet with lips shut close and with eyes of iron
Stood and beheld me.

Then to me so lying awake a vision
Came without sleep over the seas and touched me,
Softly touched mine eyelids and lips; and I too,
Full of the vision,

etc
http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/swin...rand=swinburne

[John Whitworth]

Perhaps one could add this which surely must be the most accomplished piece of verse written (at least in part) by an English Prime Minister. I think it goes with more of a swing than the Swinburne.

Friend of Humanity

Needy Knife-grinder! whither are you going?
Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order --
Bleak blows the blast; -- your hat has got a hole in't,
So have your breeches!

"Weary Knife-grinder! little think the proud ones,
Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike-
Road, what hard work 'tis crying all day "knives and
Scissors to grind O!"

"Tell me, Knife-grinder, how you came to grind knives?
Did some rich man tyranically use you?
Was it the squire? or parson of the parish?
Or the attorney?

"Was it the squire, for the killing of his game? or
Covetous parson, for his tithes distraining?
Or roguish lawyer, made you lose your little
All in a lawsuit?

"(Have you not read the Rights of Man, by Tom Paine?)
Drops of compassion tremble on my eyelids,
Ready to fall, as soon as you have told your
Pitiful story."

Knife-grinder

"Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir,
Only last night a-drinking at the Chequers,
This poor old hat and breeches, as you see, were
Torn in a scuffle.

"Constables came up for to take me into
Custody; they took me before the justice;
Justice Oldmixon put me in the parish -
Stocks for a vagrant.

"I should be glad to drink your Honour's health in
A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence;
But for my part, I never love to meddle
With politics, sir."

Friend of Humanity

"I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damn'd first --
Wretch! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance --
Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded,
Spiritless outcast!"

(Kicks the Knife-grinder, overturns his wheel, and exits in a transport of Republican enthusiasm and universal philanthropy.)

George Canning and Hookham Frere

[Kevin Corbett]

This is done well enough. But I'm skeptical about the wisdom of trying to translate a quantitative meter into an accentual-syllabic one, or trying to write quantitative meter in English. In a non-inflected language, it either won't work, or won't really be a sapphic. But this poem does enough on its own to be somewhat interesting.