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  #21  
Unread 08-17-2001, 01:35 PM
Carol Taylor Carol Taylor is offline
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I don't have a list. To tell you the truth, I don't even substitute consciously while I'm writing; that is, I don't think about the fact that I'm substituting as opposed to writing straight iambs (or whatever I'm writing in). I work by ear, weaving words into the beat in my head in what I hope is a natural sequence that allows the rhyme to occur where I want a rhyme to be. If the line sounds too stiff I may look for a way to loosen the meter up in the course of revising the draft. If people nag me a lot I may take out an anapest or two.

I'd say if you can't memorize 30,000 lines, memorize 10,000. You'll get the hang of it long before that if you don't have two left ears. Sure the ear can be trained, but the longer it's left untrained the less fluent you will eventually become. Sort of like learning a foreign language. It's a shame kids don't learn to do both while they're kids.

Carol

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  #22  
Unread 08-17-2001, 02:13 PM
Solan Solan is offline
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Carol, your comment plays in with another thread from a month ago: Learning language by means of poetry. I wonder if that issue can be re-raised?

I hope I haven't created the impression in this thread that I seek a "substitute for reading poetry". What would be the point of that? What I ask for is a vocabulary and a key so I know what to look for. This is the way I learn. Maybe this is uncommon, but it is the way I have found that I learn best. My personal story in a nutshell: Last guy in class to pass the tests on the multiplication tables, worked my way past, and now have a maths PhD. Mere rote learning does not work for me. Reading the poems I would have read anyway, but armed with an arsenal to understand them, will work. That, plus experimenting with that arsenal by writing things, to discover what works by simple trial-and-failure.

What Robert calles ionics and Gwynn calls pyrrhic+spondee or spondee+pyrrhic (more difficult to say, so I'll stick to saying ionics from now on) have captured my attention. There's some kind of aesthetic to them that attracts me more than other substitutions. At least at this point. The wavy effect of ionics that would Steele-scan 2-1-4-3 are very interesting.

It seems ionics can appear anywhere in an IP line. How do double ionics work in IP? Does anyone have good or bad examples of double ionics?

---

Svein Olav

.. another life

[This message has been edited by Solan (edited August 17, 2001).]
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  #23  
Unread 08-17-2001, 02:42 PM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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Doubles are hard to pull off, Svein, but for a class on the ionic majore and minore, read Yeats' great meditation, All Souls' Night. From memory, here's the beginning:

Midnight has come, and the great Christ Church bell
And many a lesser bell sound through the room,
And it is All Souls' Night,
and two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost's right,
His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine breath
While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.

If that isn't proof of the existence of the phyrric and spondee, I don't know what is. Sam Gwynn and I are in perfect agreement about that. But I also believe Sam's right: if you heard Robert, Tim M., Tim S., or Sam read ASN, we'd do the meters identically. Our disagreement is one of nomenclature, not the ear.

PS. Our Duchess has more sense than anybody on staff, and I love her Modest Proposal that newbies begin with 10,000 lines.
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  #24  
Unread 08-17-2001, 04:34 PM
robert mezey robert mezey is offline
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Svein, Tim's example is pretty good, but if you
mean one ionic followed immediately by another,
here's a terrific example, one after another after
another---also Yeats:

Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or BREAK STONES
Like an OLD PAUPer in ALL KINDS
of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to WORK HARDer than ALL THESE, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clegymen
The martyrs call the world.


How about that? Three ionics in a row, and then two
more for good measure.
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  #25  
Unread 08-17-2001, 07:01 PM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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What a flawless citation, Bob. I never memorized that poem, but twenty years after I'd studied it, I was explaining to a student "Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought/ Our stitching and unstitching has been nought." He asked if I could do the whole poem, and damned if I didn't have it in my head! (The poem is Adam's Curse, and it is what Auden called "memorable speech.")
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  #26  
Unread 08-17-2001, 10:31 PM
Solan Solan is offline
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Robert, Tim: I'll be re-reading those verses to get the feel for them.

Triple ionic? Maybe I'm easily excited, but I am impressed! And again I am impressed by your memory. I used to be impressed by a girl I know who could recite all of Blake's poems while I would fall off after two lines when reciting Tyger! Tyger! (despite that I had read it almost too many times). You really meant memorizing 30000 lines, and not just reading them.


------------------
Svein Olav

.. another life
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