Hi Doug
sorry for the delay in response, apart from anything else I'm finding it
difficult to keep up with everything on lists, but this point of Bunting's
about the four beat line is interesting. Very broadly, I agree with him,
although I'd qualify that by saying that the five beater in English +tends+
to consist of four primary stresses plus maybe a subsidiary beat, however,
there are many exceptions to that statement. BB's notion of the 'base line'
is very pertinent. But I do find elements of Bunting's own practice too
'congested' rhythmically, I'm sure many would disagree with that, the lines
in the much-admired 'Briggflats' for instance often seem too 'bunched' to
me. By contrast, much writing in the 'avant-garde' field seems to lack
rhythmic focus, I won't name names but I've been looking at work mentioned
here in recent days and my prevailing sense has been one of disappointment.
Which word I guess means a condition of 'not-meeting'.
On a broad historical scale, one of the difficulties about discussing verse
in English has been the evolution of the language: it went from being a
markedly inflected and grammatically 'synthetic' tongue with a predominantly
falling rhythm to be being a grammatically pared-down 'analytic' language
with a mainly rising, iambic-anapaestic drift, with of course an orthography
apparently designed by a madman. Which plays the bugger with interpreting
intentions of pronunciation.
Except again where song or song-alike is concerned, then it goes all
trochaic-dactylic once more, just to confuse matters.
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:26 PM
Subject: Re: where is the current avant-garde?
>I don't know Dave, we have to use some terms, much as we might want
>to get around them. I have tended towwqrd terms like 'innovative'
>rather than avant garde if only because it is a bit more 'neutral'
>as you say.
>
>If one looks, in terms of poetry, at the nearest one can get to being
>neutral, i.e. prosody, there one finds, in terms of English language
poetry,
>a toolshed of various objects, the imported language of the Renaissance
>scholars can be used, so we can talk about iambs and dactyls and all their
>brethren plus as well the recherché refinements of anacrusis and catalexis
>and so forth. Or we can import from linguistics such as the Trager-Smith
>prosody, emulate Hopkins if you like or whatever. But all these, whatever
>their virtues or defects, are no more than approximations, inaccurate maps.
not only that by un-english for someone like Bunting, who rants
wonderfully against the importation of french concepts of the line to
england. He suggests that the four beat line, with as many or as few
non-accented syllables as needed, is the base-line (bass-line?) of
most of what is called iambic pentameter, & makes a pretty good case
with his quotes. But then he sees Wyatt as the great progenitor &
Spenser as great but ruinous for the way he introduced
'ornamentation' to all who followed (& followed his lead).
I don't agree with all his evaluations (& boy does he evaluate) but
it's definitely provocative & often feels right (on).
Doug
--
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta
Canada T6G 2E5
(780) 492 0521
That's not a cross look it's a sign of life
Frank O'Hara
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