> (For a lulu of a conundrum, have a look at Wyatt's sonnet, "Farewell, Love,
> and all thy laws forever". In the Egerton MS, it's thirteen lines of
> iambpent with one awkward intrusive line, but in the earlier version, found
> in the Devonshire MS, "Now farewell Love and thy laws forever", it's roughly
> 50/50 iambic pentameter lines and four-stress lines. Difficult to know
> quite what to do with something like that.)
>
> Robin
The "Now..." is much less definitive than "Farewell..." which suggests a
genuine, no "ifs" or "buts", closure. "Now" implies there might still be a
future moment in which to change one's mind. Robin, are the "laws" referred
to ones of meter or ones of State or both. (T.S. Eliot, I think, was
convinced that there was a web of coherence between State, High Church and
poetic meter.)
Which is the irony of hip-hop and rhyme. Or Jean Genet's The Blacks.
Or Helen Adam. (Another hero!)
Isn't it the clash of ghettos - whether High Church or, say, Bob Marley -
that's makes poetry much more electric, rich.
And that bristling - in the eyes of some, no doubt provincial - feeling I
get - that the commitment to the re-enshrinement of meter - formalism? -
becomes a poetic ghetto?
Skill with traditional meters - now matter how skilled - is like operating
with one hand. (Who's remark was that about the difference between those who
used strick meter and those who did not was the difference between playing
tennis with or without a net?)
Ron Silliman is definitely a formalist - one whose diverse works operates
within a predetermined structure, all quite various. Annie, as you well
might, do you accept Ron as a formalist? Much of Lyn Hejinian's work is also
formalist, in that sense of setting up a predetermined structure. I don't
think either poet's work would easily cotton to some kind of strict sense of
formal scansion. I might be wrong.
Stephen V
Blog: http://stephenvincent.durationpress.com
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