Thanks Robin,
Knew about Moore and Gunn, but missed Bridges.
G.S.Fraser traces the history in the 20th C. but no reasons are given.
American speech patterns seem to be the clue to experimentation by Auden,
Gunn and a few others but the motives are a mystery and are what I am
looking for.
Roger Collett
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robin Hamilton" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2001 7:01 PM
Subject: Re: syllabics
Roger:
There's a short article (with bibliography) in the _Princeton Encyclopaedia
of Poetry and Poetics_. Robert Bridges in the 1920s would seem to be the
earliest exponent, though the most prominent is Marianne Moore (see, in it's
three incarnations, "Poetry" -- 'I, too, dislike it ...", originally 1921.
The version in Moore's _Collected Poems_ is ... hm ... incomplete ...) Thom
Gunn used it much later (I think).
I'm not sure if it's natural to any language (certainly to none of the major
European ones). Breaking the tyranny of the iamb is probably Pound, but he
wasn't referring to syllabics specifically in the context in which that
remark was made. I've come across the argument that syllabics tend to work
best when there are an uneven number of syllables per line, which +would+
see it as specifically a counter-iambic exeperiment.
Robin Hamilton
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