[Clive Watkins]

I wonder if the following, perhaps rather curt, paragraphs might be a useful adjunct to the discussion on a near-by thread about the naming of the Metrical and Non-Metrical Boards. They grew out of a private conversation with Curtis Weeks a couple of years ago, but their origins lie a long way back in my years teaching English and English literature. Though eventually they were posted publicly on one of these boards and still are probably accessible, here they are again.

Let me say quite plainly that nothing in what follows should be read as valuing one form of verse over another. I am merely concerned with setting out the pattern of concepts and terminology within which, in this area, I choose to work.

1 All poetry is fiction, even when it presents itself as reportage. Poets are makers of fictions.

2 Verse is a form (and therefore a sub-set) of poetry.

3 The defining formal feature of verse is that it is in lines. From this it follows that what is sometimes called “prose poetry” is exactly that. It is not, self-evidently, verse.

4 In metrical verse, lines are measured according to a defined system. Such a system is called metre.

5 By “defined system” I mean a closed system of conventions according to which a majority of readers and writers who have learned that system can reliably and consensually identify lines which do not conform to the conventions of the system. We might call such readers and writers “competent”. This may seem loose and circular as a definition, but it is no more impracticable than many definitions within the civil and criminal law. Its mode of resolving conflicts is also similar - by appeal to a combination of expertise and common sense.

6 In English, such metrical systems include accentual-syllabic verse, accentual verse and syllabic verse. (Other languages of which I have direct knowledge - French, German, Italian, Old English and Latin - have metrical systems to which the definition given in the last paragraph applies. Indeed, one might speculate that, as far as Indo-European languages are concerned such systems are universal. I suspect they are for other languages as well, at least those with a written poetic culture.)

7 One of the conventions of metrical verse is that, when printed, its lineation should reflect the metrical pattern, rather than be arbitrarily imposed from outside the metrical system. The case of blank verse is relevant. In some blank verse (Milton’s for instance) it is sometimes possible to relineate without breaking the metrical paradigm. This demonstrates nothing more, however, than that within the metrical paradigm other arrangements are possible. All will be identical in conforming to and maintaining the paradigm; rearrangements which break the paradigm will be seen to be metrically defective. Those that do not break the paradigm may be adjudged aesthetically superior or inferior to Milton’s; but that is not a prosodic question.

8 The fact that a line conforms to the metrical system which defines it does not mean that it is an effective line from an aesthetic point of view. Its conformity is no more than a metrical fact. (Too often we confuse prosodic and aesthetic issues.)

9 All verse in which the length of lines is determined without the framework of such a defined system is non-metrical verse. The distinguishing feature here is the fact that, in contrast to metrical verse, no appeal is possible to a definable system of conventions. That is, there is no logical way of declaring a line defective in terms of its status as a line of non-metrical verse, other than when it happens to conform to the conventions of metrical verse - i.e. that it is metrical. But to indicate that, in a poem otherwise written throughout in non-metrical lines, a single line happens to be metrical is to report nothing more than that such a line conforms to the conventions of such and such a metrical system.

10 An interesting marginal case would be presented by a passage of verse where a competent reader would detect a high proportion of lines which were nearly metrical, the remainder being non-metrical. Depending on one’s taste, one might describe such a passage as botched metrical verse or as a species of non-metrical verse which dwells, as it were, in the borders of metricality. Much of Eliot’s non-metrical verse is of this kind.

11 The factors which poets writing non-metrical verse consider in deciding where to break lines are very various and include linguistic features which in other times have been treated under the heading of “rhetoric”. There is, as far as I am aware, no consensus either on what those factors are nor how they are structured in relation to one another. They are, precisely, unsystematic.

12 Such factors include rhythm. By this I mean those rhythms which the naturally occurring stresses of the language set up. I am not thinking of other kinds of rhythm - for instance, rhythms that exist by virtue of syntax or through such figures as chiasmus or anaphora.

13 All utterances in English are rhythmical in the nature of the language. Therefore, all forms of verse, both metrical and non-metrical, are rhythmical. Rhythm, both in metrical and non-metrical contexts, can be deployed to aesthetic effect. This is why, for instance, it makes sense to engage in discussions of the rhythms of prose.

14 Among metrical forms, accentual-syllabic metre and accentual metre derive conventions from the stress-patterns which naturally arise in speech. Such conventions consist in establishing for a given type of line the expectation in the reader that stresses will fall with a high degree of regularity in a certain predictable pattern in relation to unstressed syllables. Such a pattern is a pattern of metrical beats. Metrical beats and stresses are different entities. Sometimes metrical beats and naturally occurring stresses may coincide; sometimes they will not. The interplay between the expectation of metrical beats and the actually occurring pattern of stresses is made possible by the phenomena of promotion and demotion. Like metrical beats, promotion and demotion are defining features of English accentual and accentual-syllabic metres.

15 These features of accentual-syllabic and accentual metre are integral to the utterance itself. That is, within the metrical system, they provide formal markers, boundaries inherent in the words themselves, which both determine and indicate the desired patterning.

16 In the case of non-metrical verse, such form-defining features of language are either unsystematized (for instance, the use of isocolon as a line-determinant) or they are external to the utterance itself (such as lineation), or both. By external I mean that there is nothing in the words themselves which indicates why they must be disposed in such and such lines and not in some other way. Rather, the disposition into lines is superadded to the words. There is no systematically required reason for the lines to be organized as they are. For this reason, lineation in non-metrical verse should be seen as a rhetorical device, adumbrating to the reader a particular pacing or kind of emphasis, rather as italics or bold type do.

17 One consequence of this is that for some non-metrical verse its existence in print can be crucial. In the absence of other line-end markers, the lay-out of the text on the page is a key device in shaping the language in which the poem is couched. Not all performers of verse, whether metrical or non-metrical, choose to mark with the voice where line-ends fall. In the case of non-metrical verse, it is possible to read in such a way that line-ends are completely obscured. A listener following on the page, however, or a reader reading aloud from a text, will be aware of these matters. Even if he or she chooses not to mark the line-end in the reading voice, the awareness has its effect.

18 It might be supposed that the same is true in the case of metrical verse. I submit that, for a competent listener, it is not. The fact that the metrical determinants of systematically organized rhythm are inherent in the utterance itself ensures that the pattern of lines is never completely lost. An ear familiar with metrical conventions will, in hearing any verse read for the first time, seek to guess whether it is metrical or non-metrical. This is simply an aspect of our pattern-seeking intelligence. Where such patterns are metrical, metrical patterns will be detected. Where they are not, the rhythmic nature of the utterance will be heard and the fact that it is not metrical will be noted.

19 Within the context of these remarks, syllabic verse may be an anomaly. Since line-length is determined by what I have called a closed system of conventions, it is a type of metre. Arguably, however, and for this writer, it lacks one important feature shared by the other two English metres: its ordering principle, though inherent in the structuring of the words, is not audible. This is because, unlike accentual-syllabic and accentual verse, its defining convention does not spring from the felt dynamics of the language itself: it is something added, arbitrarily, from the outside. Like non-metrical verse, therefore, its disposition into lines benefits from the reader’s knowing from the printed page how the words are divided. Auden was, I believe, aware of this fact and would read his syllabics so as to drop a tiny, though often unnatural, pause at the end of each line.

Clive Watkins

[nyctom]

Thank you!

re: Eliot. Yes, absolutely, but based on the little of his work I have read, I would bet Wallace Stevens follows a similar "pattern"--with a majority of lines being, at the very least, iambic. I wouldn't be surprised to see similar patterns--perhaps to a lesser extent--in Bishop's work. In fact--and I am no academic so this is largely based on my own admittedly scattershot reading--"modernists" such as Eliot, Stevens, Pound, cummings, Moore, wrote a "free verse" that may be said to be more evolutionary than revolutionary, at least from a historical perspective. Compare their work, for instance, to Stein's poetry, such as Tender Buttons. If I remember correctly, Pound was arguing against the artifice and perceived rigidity (my terms) of late Victorian and Edwardian poetry, not arguing poets should throw the baby out with the bathwater, tub, and scrub brush.

What I think is more of a shame is how much energy Americans spend perpetuating what Mr. Stockton on another thread called a 'binary system.' I tend more to an extrapolation from Wilde's view: there ARE two kinds of writing--good and bad. (Though one hopes the bad can be made better!)

Ah well. Back to scrubbing the shower. But thank you for re-posting this Clive. Very thought-provoking, in the best sense of that phrase.

nyctom

[Lo]

I've learned as much here today as I've learned in a year elsewhere.
Thank you, Clive....muchly.

Lo

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

Just a quick fly-by, Clive.

It took me awhile to see...though I have seen for some time now that, yes, if we are to have the terms "metrical" and "non-metrical," your type definition works well. There is still the unresolved (for/by me) issue of systematized rhetoric(s), but I am no longer asserting that "free" verse has its own kind of meters!

I should like to add, though maybe I've missed or forgotten its mention in your post, that "unmetered" should not be taken to mean "unstructured." [I just wanted to clarify the point, here.]

I'm not at all satisfied with the designation "free" verse, nor with the designation "open form." I'd rather say that what we are calling non-metrical poetry often relies quite much on the emergence of form more than metrical poetry relies on it—emergence of a or a multiplicity of forms.

The problem with such a declaration, for me at least, is that metrical poetry ought pay special attention to such emergence, too. IMO. I.e., great or good metrical poetry requires the emergence of form(s) beyond the expected audible forms of the two major metrical patterns you've mentioned. (--skipping for now the issue of syllabics--)

As you may see, I'm still unsettled by the nearly empty meaning of the distinction you would use in your dualist terminology—though just as obviously, the distinction has some use.




[This message has been edited by Curtis Gale Weeks (edited June 11, 2004).]

[Clive Watkins]

Dear Curtis

It’s good to hear from you.

I agree, of course, that “non-metrical” as I would define it does not mean the same thing as “formless”. I just think it’s helpful in this area of debate to constrain the sense of “metrical” and “non-metrical” rather tightly.

All the best…

Clive