Patrick,
Without Max's overt description of his process ("counting the syllables"), I wouldn't have done so, but I thought there was a chance he might be writing in syllabics rather than "varying from an otherwise over-monotonous iambic line".
Max,
I arrived on campus the semester after Yvor Winters retired, and never heard him lecture. He still dominated the department via a number of major students in positions of power, and I took courses from some of them. As an undergraduate, I did a lot of work on traditional prosody. Hearing Donald Davie lecture on many occasions and reading his books (in particular, Articulate Energy) advanced that interest. Can't say I deliberately write in meter (or syllabics), but suspect my poems may benefit from the quantity of attention I've paid to prosody over the years.
I'm looking forward to reading Robert Archambeau's very recent critical study of Winters and his late students, "Laureates and Heretics".
Barry
On Thu, 24 Mar 2011 11:27:26 -0000, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Barry Gawd counting syllables what a ghastly soul destroying jobby -hope you
survive !!cut beat thwack the poor poem ugh!!!!!!!!!!
P the peasant
On Thu, 24 Mar 2011 10:34:03 +1100, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>And did you once see/hear Winters expound versification, Barry?
>Or D Davie?
>What got drummed into me at my so-called grammar school in Auckland, 1950s,
>was Tennysonian correctness.
>At Auckland univ the poet Allen Curnow expounded Hopkins's system and
>practice.
>Syllabics resisted my ear, I fear.
>Latin teachers expounded notions of how Virgil et al versified, but I never
>grasped what 'quantity' might mean.
>As a teacher I seldom managed to train the 'ear' of poetry-students.
>Maybe some did consciously work on rhythm more than before.
>(Next time bring your attempt at a sonnet! Woeful, incorrigible...)
>
>I think adjusting my lines nowadays is always to do with varying from an
>otherwise over-monotonous iambic line.
>
>Max
>
>
>
>On 24/03/11 3:22 AM, "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> An interesting point, barry, & I can see Max 'correcting' a bit & maybe
>> setting up a slightly jarring rhythm as a result. If he wanted to, of
>> course....
>>
>> Doug
>> On 2011-03-23, at 9:33 AM, Barry Alpert wrote:
>>
>>> Well, Max, I counted syllables, but though 10 lines with 6 syllables each
>>> predominate in the count, I can't find an overall pattern in the stanzas and
>>> assume you're not writing syllabics. Although Yvor Winters' interest in
>>> Elizabeth Daryush and Robert Bridges as writers of syllabics comes to mind
>>> for the first time in ages. Plus my own memory snap of Winters and Janet
>>> Lewis walking across campus with their Airedales: "true or imagined?" Barry
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