Hi Anne

I am teaching formalism this semester and your book sounds like one I would 
love to read. Is it available on Amazon or anywhere? I found your reply very 
interesting.

Best wishes
Annie McGann

>From: Annie Finch <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and  
>             poetics <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: any formalists...
>Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 13:03:05 -0400
>
>Hi everyone,
>
>i apologize that because of going on vacation,  I came across as dropping a 
>little formalist bomb & ran.  I was really just trying to provide helpful 
>scansion info as Sharon had requested,  but of course you can't furnish 
>info about meter nowadays without raising a ruckus,  as I should have 
>realized.  Now I'm back, after Alison alerted me to the extent of the 
>responses.  So,  a few responses to some of the issues raised...
>
>  Re the question of what is poetry,  I do think it is really rather funny 
>(ha ha not wierd) that just because someone wants to write iambic 
>pentameter and someone else gives them some tips on how to do it,  the 
>whole nature of poetry seems to be threatened in some quarters!  Just 
>because some people want to use meter,  doesn't mean free verse is not 
>poetry.  My recently coedited book An Exaltation of Forms includes sections 
>on meters and forms by many poets: sections on accentual meter,  syllabic 
>meter,  counted verse (meter formed of counting words) and various 
>accentual-syllabic meters (not only iambic but also dactylic, sapphic 
>meter, etc.) as well as free verse.  Each of these involves repetition of 
>some aspect of language (free verse involves repetition of line breaks),  
>which is why they are all poetry,  in my opinion.
>
>The post from Sharon I was responding to wasn't about how to write poetry 
>in general,  but about how to write poetry in iambic pentameter. Yes,  
>there are ways to do various meters right and wrong,  and just because I 
>have loved the sound of meter enough to learn and study many of those ways 
>doesn't mean I am trying to push something arbitrary down anybody's throat 
>by sheer force of will/conviction.. . I would never waste my energy in such 
>an effort. For example, what I said about particular lines of Sharon's 
>scanning and not scanning,  and how to make them sound like iambic 
>pentameter (her stated goal),  would be agreed on by anyone with basic 
>knowledge of prosody--(and, by the way, the iambic pentameter of ANY poet 
>who has written i.p. from Donne to Pope  to Keats to Browning to Hart Crane 
>to Gwendolyn Brooks would conform to the same basic principles.  It's 
>simply not true to say that just because each of them, being a great poet, 
>has a different voice and way of handling the meter, they are following 
>different prosodic rules. That's like saying that because Charlie Parker 
>and Lester Young have different sounds when they play the same tune, they 
>are playing it on different scales.) The principles I was using to correct 
>the scansion of Sharon's sonnet were very basic, like scales, and great 
>metrical poets play on those basic scales and make them their own without 
>violating them.  When I said Dylan Thomas "got away with" trochees in an 
>unusual place, what I meant had nothing to do with form being inseparable 
>from meaning--that is a quality I find in pretty much  any great poem, no 
>matter what form or free verse it is written in.  What I meant re thomas 
>was very technical, because he was a metrical virtuouso: I meant that once 
>in a while he compensates, by means of long vowels and consonant clusters 
>that slow the syllable down, for the fact that he is bending one particular 
>prosodic rule very far.  Far from making up his own system, he understands 
>the system he is using very very well and is completely comfortable with 
>it. (Sounds like Joanna was doing something similar in her 9-syllable line, 
>which her teacher couldn't hear--if the teacher understood i.p. better, she 
>would know that an iambic pentameter can have anywhere from 8 to 14 
>syllables and still scan as a "good" iambic pentameter).  That's why I 
>suggested Sharon wait till she was a bit more comfortable with the meter 
>before trying to do that--based on the fact that her attempts to write 
>iambic pentameters are not always on the mark yet.  As with so many other 
>areas of skill, once you have put in your practice, you understand on a 
>deeper level and can bend and change till the medium becomes essentially 
>transparent for your voice.  Why should writing in meter be any easier than 
>juggling, ballet, and all the other arts that take practice to learn so 
>well that the medium finally becomes a transparent tool for the expression 
>of your individuality? That's one of the main reasons I like to write in 
>meter, personally--it provides me a kind of resistance that I enjoy working 
>with.).
>
>Yes, some prosodists do use a system of four different numbered levels of 
>stress, and of course every syllable on earth has a different sound, but 
>the reason that the reductionistic marking of two or three levels (most 
>prosodists use a third level, a half-stress, in addition to stress and 
>un-stress) persist is because they are useful for pointing out patterns 
>that get lost if you pay too much attention to every gradation of stress.  
>That's what makes prosody useful for what it is useful for: helping people 
>who want to learn to listen to the metrical patterns of other poets better, 
>and to listen better to the rhythms in their lines as they work, so they 
>can write in regularly perceptible and predictable rhythmic patterns, to do 
>it accurately.  This kind of predictability doesn't work for some poets; 
>but meter used with inspired skill can send others into heights of shamanic 
>ecstasy, transporting them over from left to right brain, and any amount of 
>anti-meter argument can never reduce that sheer physical pleasure for those 
>who love meter.  So why bother to try to talk anyone out of it?  Sure, 
>crude it may be compared to the complexities of less predictable rhythmic 
>effects of free verse; but tell that to my right brain.  You can tell it 
>all day.  My right brain knows what she likes.  She hears a great metrical 
>poem and she's hooked--it's only rock n' roll; but I like it...
>
>  I've taught writing in meter for around 15 years and though yes, it is 
>pretty easy to pick up from scratch in a couple of months,  it does take 
>some practice,  just like learning to play the piano.  Poets used to pick 
>it up by osmosis,  by reading and copying those they admired (think of 
>Keats breathing Shakespeare) and some still do,  but nowadays when people 
>may not have read so much poetry in meter,  it can definitely take 
>conscious effort to get it right at first. I've found that a typical class 
>of graduate students who have never been taught meter before usually start 
>out with the attitude,  "oh that's so easy anyone can do it with no 
>practice, and I know that for dead sure because it's so uselessly old and 
>boring that I've never bothered to try."  After trying to write a few 
>different meters (I usually teach dactylic, trochaic and anapestic at the 
>same time as iambic, not to over-privilege iambic),  they realize it's not 
>as easy as it looks and they begin to respect it, and at the same time to 
>be less afraid/hateful of it. Then they see it as a tool with which one can 
>get to know the poetic language in a new way,  and maybe do great new 
>things with poetic language.
>
>The idea that form is prescriptive, restricts all poetry to one thing, is 
>an unfortunate mistunderstanding.  Form is extremely multiplicitious, 
>various.  I have personally argued for a long time for "metrical 
>diversity," bringing form away from the narrow idea that only iambic 
>pentameter matters.   There is a formal continuum that includes accentual 
>meter,  syllabic meter,  and counted verse (in other words, meters based on 
>counting accents, syllables, and words),  as well as numerous 
>accentual-syllabic meters (based on counting feet, which are combinations 
>of accents and syllables): not only iambic but also trochaic,  dacytlic,  
>anapestic,  and many "maverick" meters such as amphibrachs and cretics 
>(Auden, by the way, whom I think somebody mentioned, did not do these 
>things unconsciously at all, but in fact said that his ideal reader "keeps 
>an eye out for obscure metrical fauna such as bacchics and choriambs") as 
>well as open field,  incanational and short-lined meditative free verse,  
>chants and litanies,  rap and hiphop...  In my opinion, these are all 
>forms, including free verse by definition of repeating some aspects of the 
>language ( which is why all equally have sections in An Exaltation of 
>Forms.)
>
>That Joanna had an uninformed,  or simply lousy,  teacher of meter who told 
>her her lines were "wrong," and didn't recognize the rhythm she was trying 
>to convey and  teach her the principles so she could discover the many 
>options for conveying it prosodically herself,  is a shame. But it doesn't 
>make the beautiful subtle expressive system of meter rigid just because 
>somebody tried to bring out the underlying rhythm of a poem with a 
>sledgehammer when she could have used tweezers. Every field has didactic,  
>doctrinaire teachers.  I am sorry if I came across as one of them in my 
>post to Sharon--I was anxious that she should have the information she 
>clearly wanted about how to make her poem scan,  but that doesn't mean I 
>would ever have provided that information in any kind of prescriptive way 
>if she hadn't asked for it originally.
>
>Since she said she wanted it to scan,  and I knew why it didn't,  I took 
>the most direct route. I realize my post must have sounded nerdy and 
>over-detailed if you didn't know the context I am coming from,  and maybe 
>should have been backchanneled.  I hope this makes my context a bit 
>clearer:  I love the details that make each meter and form,  including free 
>verse,  work in its own terms,  but have no interest in privileging one 
>over others or saying that one has a corner on "poetry."
>
>Yours in poetry,
>
>Annie (who incidentally loves haggis and is happy to be called a hag as 
>well)
>
>
>
>
>Attention,  yes, but misplaced attention can kill, If one is unfamiliar 
>with the set of assumptions underlying this analysis, then I suppose it can 
>be impressive. The certainty will certainly impress., But even "I prescribe 
>three dock leaves and a hopping frog" can be, impressive if it's said with 
>enough conviction., Many things,  refrigerators,  electric / gas cookers 
>for instance,  cannot be, made unless one knows a whole set of things,  
>many or most of which can be, learned as rules: if you do x then y happens, 
>poetry isnt like that, the poetry came first, and it evolved without there 
>being such rules, The rules came later based both on observation of what 
>poets did *and on, assumptions about the relationship of english to latin 
>etc etc, It doesn't actually work in a great many cases, It isnt 100 per 
>cent wrong of course. It's a bit shaky. It's at least as, shaky as "a pinch 
>of salt" or "cook until brown", It requires judgement i.e. something 
>outside of the system, It is therefore a useful tool at certain times, A 
>while ago,  I walked with a man who eschewed my use of Ordnance Survey map, 
>saying that he could see his way quite well and would only refer to a, 
>compass. I use the map and *carry a compass in case I get confused in a 
>way, that a compass will help., It was interesting... Being new to the 
>area,  he did not know where he was in, any experiential way; and by most 
>people's definition he was lost the whole, time. He benefitted from 
>knowledge of the overall shape and limitations of, his terrain,  but he 
>denied that was any help. I cannot help thinking he was, wrong..., I don't 
>think I need to expand on that. The map is slow and leaves the, decision 
>making up to the walker. The compass just gives one datum and that, rather 
>makes it a command because one has no supporting data. It makes for, fast 
>walking - I shall go north,  but there is no allowance for reflection or, 
>ambling., For what it's worth,  my main tool for writing is my ear - my 
>inner ear if I, must,  but I best like to chant my poem, The apparatus we 
>have just seen demonstrated is also part of my toolkit. My, toolkit is 
>modified from the one I was taught 40 years ago - though not, formally. I 
>allow,  for instance,  for the certain fact that unstress and, stress are 
>not the only two categories there are; and therefore a metrical, analysis 
>system which assumes there are will not work..., But as I am not teaching 
>this system I have never bothered to write it down, and dont have it in my 
>head in a transcribable form. Let each make her own, tools. I think it is 
>best applied by the tool-maker - cf Peter Hall on Radio, 4 yesterday saying 
>that if you want to know over all how the voices in a, play might sound 
>then listen to the writer speak, I NEVER use it as an arbiter,  but only to 
>see what's going on. Often as not, I have more than one line or variations 
>of a line simultaneously in my, hearing of the line,  and a little beat 
>counting may sort that out., So I come out of any particular _analysis_ 
>with a series of measurements not, expressed in any standard form. I 
>couldnt even usually tell you what I now, know, The beat counting can be 
>complex because while I start initially on the, crude assumption of stress 
>/ unstress,  I modify that as I go along, It's the difference between 
>looking at a shelf to see if it looks straight, though one has a spirit 
>level.... It's like looking at the sell by date *and, sniffing the food 
>itself, What matters most is what is being said. I do NOT mean the 
>abstractable, prose statement of what the poem "means" which so many crave, 
>  but what is, going on at that point in the poem, a line collapse may be 
>appropriate, ditto too much in a line, i suppose this is what is meant by 
>the likes of d thomas "getting away with
>it" - the verse matched the meaning. In those whose poems did not match, 
>rhythm and measure with meaning there was a greater or lesser dissonance, 
>to establish rules for what constitutes a good line and a bad line, 
>mechanically is putting too much faith in the very shaky rule
>
>______________________________________________________________________
>
>Annie Finch, Director
>Stonecoast Brief-Residency MFA in Creative Writing
>University of Southern Maine
>222 Deering St.
>Portland, Maine 04104
>
>Phone:   207-780-5973
>Web: anniefinch.com
>
>
>
>___________________________________
>
>Annie Finch, Director
>Stonecoast Brief-Residency MFA in Creative Writing
>University of Southern Maine
>222 Deering St.
>Portland, Maine 04104
>
>Phone:   207-780-5973
>Email:  [log in to unmask]
>Web: http://www.anniefinch.com
>http://www.usm.maine.edu/stonecoastmfa/
>
>—THE BODY OF POETRY: ESSAYS ON WOMEN, FORM, AND THE POETIC SELF —just out 
>in the Poets on Poetry series from University of Michigan Press—