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  #1  
Unread 11-10-2002, 06:15 PM
Robert Swagman Robert Swagman is offline
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We had started to have discussions on line a little while ago, and would like to see those continue.

Some reading I've been doing lately spoke of 'coincidence of line' - the concept that a line and phrase coincide when the phrase ends at the end of a line. Coincidence causes stability, but extending the phrase or sentence beyond the line creates a tension to help move the pace of the poem along. I was wondering if anyone could expound on that?


Also, on the use of half-meaning - where a line may have a particular meaning which may be altered, even contradicted when the phrase or sentence is completed on a different line.


[This message has been edited by Robert Swagman (edited November 10, 2002).]
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  #2  
Unread 11-11-2002, 08:17 AM
Richard Wakefield Richard Wakefield is offline
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Robert:
I think the interplay of line and phrase is one of the most interesting parts of poetry. In fact, one common mark of doggerel (and mind you, I love some of it) is that the lines and phrases coincide perfectly. Frost talks about the tension between the ordinary rhythms of speech and the strict meter (and presumably lineation) of verse as part of poetry's vitality.
This example doesn't exactly fit your question, as I understand it, but it's a nice performance. It's from RF's "A Witness Tree," titled "Trespass":
No, I had set no prohibiting sign,
And yes, my land was hardly fenced.
Nevertheless the land was mine:
I was being trespassed on and against.

Whoever the surly freedom took
Of such an unaccountable stay
Busying my woods and brook
Gave me a strangely restless day.

The four lines of the first stanza are all end stopped, and each contains an independent clause. It seems to me the perfect expression of the boundary setting temperament of the speaker. The second stanza is one long clause, the grammatical subject being "whoever" and the verb -- delayed for three lines -- "gave." There are no stops at all, not a caesura to be heard. The sentence pushes across the line breaks that were so firmly established in the preceeding stanza. It's as if the trespasser has created some sort of neurological devastation in the speaker's brain, insinuating his (the trespasser's) boundary breaking temperament into the speaker's very syntax.
Richard
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Unread 11-12-2002, 07:45 AM
Robert Swagman Robert Swagman is offline
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Richard

It's an excellent example of line usage and meaning, on a deeper level. I also noticed the pace of the second stanza was remarkably quicker, aided perhaps by a difference in diction, also (?).

The comment about 'strict meter as part of poetry's vitality' leads me to believe you would prefer a formal piece to be as strict as possible - no substitutions if possible. Am I mistaken with this assumption?


Jerry

[This message has been edited by Robert Swagman (edited November 12, 2002).]
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Unread 11-12-2002, 03:50 PM
Richard Wakefield Richard Wakefield is offline
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Robert:
No, I don't believe strict meter is the ideal, and I see the strict meter of many of my own poems as a fault, as if a pianist were to take the stage and then play to a metronome. The ideal, to my ear (and I think this is what Frost had in mind as well, and of course he was a far better practitioner), is a meter that is established pretty clearly so that the variations are more clearly felt. After all, we sense things in contrast to similar but slightly different things, as Frost well understood from his readings of William James's "Psychology." Here are the opening lines of one of his very, very early poems:

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

The first few feet skip along in no very certain meter. I hear a dactyl and a trochee, but not very emphatically. Then it settles into pretty clear iambs until the middle of the fourth line, where the voice seems to try to pull out of the lockstep, so to speak, with the almost dactylic "unto the" but falls right back into it with "the edge of doom." To my ear those last four words get special emphasis, and not merely because they conclude the line and the stanza and end with the ominous rhyme of doom/gloom. I hear a little drama expressed in stresses. The rhythm works slightly against the meter, pulls against it, but only slightly and only futilely. It's as if the speaker's imagery has dragged him someplace he's not so sure he wants to go. That seems to me a wonderful example of the expressive interplay of strict and loose meter, or of speech rhythms and strict iambs.
Those are the kinds of sounds I always hear when I'm creating a poem but that I never quite manage to catch, alas.
Richard
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Unread 11-13-2002, 03:46 PM
Robert Swagman Robert Swagman is offline
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Richard

So substitutions are best when they only tug at the fabric of the meter, but don't fray it . I think your answer will permit me to go back to recent experiments and allow some effective changes (I hope.) I can't thank you enough for the time you spent.

If you ever start teaching around Cincinnati, let me know.

Jerry
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Unread 11-19-2002, 11:30 AM
Dan Scheltema Dan Scheltema is offline
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Examples of the changing meaning of the line from the end of one to the beginning of the next can be found in Weldon Kees's "For My Daughter." He constantly creates expectations in one line, only to upturn them in the next. He does it in about half the 14 lines to some degree. Two good examples are in lines 10 and 11:

Or, fed on hate, she relishes the sting
Of others agony; perhaps the cruel
Bride of a syphilitic or a fool.

"Sting" turns from being hers, a sort of masochism, to being "others' agony," sadism. "Cruel" is set up to be others' again, but the next line pulls it back to being her, she is the "bride." There is a sort of ping-ponging between calling the daughter a victim and a victimizer, both equally bad.

And after all that setting up of and demolishing of expectations, the final couplet (not quoted) brings the whole house of cards down with a resounding crash. Dark, dark, dark, but a good poem.

(oops, dropped in some bac punctuation there in a typo)


[This message has been edited by Dan Scheltema (edited November 19, 2002).]
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  #7  
Unread 11-19-2002, 06:10 PM
Robert Swagman Robert Swagman is offline
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Thanks, Dan and welcome.

I'll have to look that one up, on your recommendation, as I'm not familiar with it. Half-meaning is a technique I like to use, but I wonder if its overuse can cause the reader to feel they're being played with for no useful purpose.

Jerry
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Unread 11-19-2002, 09:59 PM
Dan Scheltema Dan Scheltema is offline
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I did my thesis on Kees, discussing his use of the setting of and destroying of expectations as a strategy in a larger sense. When I got into it I was surprised at how much of that I saw happening not just on a macro level, but on a micro level. He did with form what he did with sense often, which was interesting to one who started off reading about poetry by reading what Frost has to say. (I wouldn't want to try to determine if Frost's theory allowed him to create his poems, or if his poems are defended by his criticism, but it sure is interesting to read the two side by side.)

Once I read with my shift meter turned on, I saw that needle twitch pretty often in the Kees poems I was working on, which strengthened my arguments a lot.

If you don't know Kees, though, be warned. Justice calls him our bitterest poet. But if you can withstand the bite of the hemlock, there's a hint of honey along with the whiff of almonds. He's interesting too as a poet on the transition into the predominantly Modernist. His forms vary from fairly firm to loose, but he clearly has a foundation in form that never quite evaporates.
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