Quickies from now on--
I won't attempt to give quick rundowns anymore on this board of ideas
already explained thoroughly elsewhere and published. If anyone
happens to be interested to see how it really works, there are more
thorough and thought out metrical code readings of many poets in The
Ghost of Meter along with discussion and responses to people's various
responses to the theory, which has proven on the controversial side.
Robin, it is true that some people scan amphibrachs as anapests;
personally I don't; I discuss why and how in an essay called "Metrical
Subversions: Prosody, Poetry and my Affair with the Amphibrach" in the
recent book The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic
Self. The amphibrachic poem you asked about, called "A Carol for
Carolyn," appears with the essay, and online at ablemuse.com. Also of
interest might be a book called Meter in English: A Symposium, where a
dozen poets discuss several questions of prosody, the existence of
amphibrachs among them. That book was a response to Robert Wallace's
notion that iambic is the only meter in English.
Mark (if it was you who asked?), as for the question of how being a
feminist relates to my formalism---certainly a central one--it's
discussed throughout The Body of Poetry book in many essays, especially
in the essay called "Formalism as Feminist Innovation."
Annie
___________________________________
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—
|