Thanks for this, Martin. I don't think I've ever read a Daryush poem, and
would like to find out something about her work. I'll have another look for
it.
One of the books that introduced me to syllabics was W..D. Snodgrass's
_Heart's Needle_. He also has an essay, which I think is called "Finding a
Poem", on how one of his syllabic poems was written. (If I remember rightly
it's included in the book.) Very much in that American academic /
confessional tradition. I liked it a lot twenty years ago - don't know what
I'd think of it now. It's interesting that Lowell turned to free verse to
get away from academic formalism while Snodgrass, at practically the same
time, turned to syllabics.
Best wishes
Matthew
-----Original Message-----
From: Martin J. Walker <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 26 July 2001 08:58
Subject: Re: syllabics
>Elizabeth Daryush, yes: "Note" dated 1934.
>> syllabic metres (by which I mean metres governed only by the number of
>syllables to the line, and in which the number and position of the stresses
>may be varied at will) and are so printed as a reminder to the reader to
>follow the natural speech-rhythm...In accentual verse the metre demands and
>justifies the use both of optional and incomplete elisions, but these are
>obviously out of place in a purely syllabic system....reduction of the
>syllabic units to their limit, so as to prevent uncertainty....I have long
>thought that on some such system as this for base, it should be possible to
>build up subtler and more freely-followed accentual patterns than can be
>obtained either by stress-verse proper, or by the traditional so-called
>syllabic metres. >
>She doesn't mention the "odd number" principle in this extract (_Selected
>Poems ~ from Verses I-VI _); I don't have _Verses VII_, which Carcanet also
>published.
>Martin
>
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