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—
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