The Relatively Recent Free Verse TraditionRJ McCaffery
RJ McCaffery "the relatively recent free verse tradition" is a phrase which keeps popping up in threads, most recently in Tom's WCW posting. But I'd like to briefly examine this breezy trope. The earliest poetry in "English" (Old English) is usually agreed to be Caedmon's Hymn (650). Trouble is, the Romans and Britains were slogging it out around as far back as the year 0 - you can assume that the Britains had poetry, all cultures do. Since most of the Germanic/Celtic poetries used the Alliterative mode, it's a safe bet that the southern Britians did as well. Caedmon's Hymn was written in the Alliterative mode, which is still around (practiced by yours truly) and went through a revival in the late 14th century via Langland and the Gwain Poet. Accentual Syllabic poetry (rhymed) in English began in the "English" court after the Norman Conquest. Let's be generous in backdating it to 1150, even though Chaucer (1375) is considered the major figure of the new AS(R) verse, produced concurrently with Alliterative verse. The written record simply isn’t very good. AS(R) verse holds dominant sway from 1500 or so up until 1900-1950, when Free Verse takes over. Let's split the difference and say 1925, just for giggles. Whitman, via Leaves of Grass (1855) might stand in as the Chaucer of our day. I'll make a further distinction between AS Rhymed v. Blank Verse. I think it was Surrey who first (1550?) used Blank Verse in English for his translation of the Aeneid. Yet a hundred years later, Milton included a AS(R) preface/apologia to Paradise Lost (1667) assuring the readers that even though it didn't rhyme, PL was still poetry. So change comes slowly - although Blank Verse was more or less fully accepted by the time Wordsworth used it for The Prelude (1805/1850). I'm doing all this off the top of my head at work, so the dates might be fuzzy. I can't think of a major Blank Verse work done after The Prelude (although there must be one). So, considering each of them "roughly dominant" or “a Major Mode”:
Alliterative Verse (pre-650 to 1400) at least 750 years, most likely 1400+ years. So, yes, free verse is "relatively recent" - but then again so is Accentual-Syllabic Rhymed verse, and so is Blank Verse (in which two of the greatest poems in English have been composed.) Milton's also a good name to mention because he used "irregular verse" in some poems. This means he used the whichever particular combination of syllables he found best to the task of each line. Kinda sounds like Free Verse to me, but nah - couldn't be! Then again Blake did the same thing. . .
Robert Schecter RJ, there's a big difference between 150 years and 775 years, isn't there? And the sort of "free verse" that dominates the last century or so actually has a lot more to do with WC Williams than Whitman. Poems like the "Red Wheelbarrow" owe very little in terms of form or strategy to Whitman. So "free verse" as we typically use the term these days probably took hold as a significant approach to poetry something under 100 years ago. I'd call that fairly recent, relatively speaking. And blank verse, of course, is metered verse. I know you haven't said otherwise, but Paradise Lost is formal, metered verse who primary advance was the way Milton used enjambment to control pacing instead of rhyme. The absence of rhyme isn't what defines free verse. The freedom is freedom from measure, not freedom from rhyme. Which is why alliterative verse wasn't "free" either, since there was a set way of measuring lines. I think I know what you're driving at, though. The idea that people who bad-mouth free verse can claim that it was a brief, failed experiment or an aberration in the history of poetry, sort of like the literary equivalent of the New Deal as recollected by the ultra conservative right wing. "Now let's get back to rhyme, meter, and the end of the welfare state." Which, of course, is utter nonsense. I think Milton's "irregular verse" (e.g. Lycidas) is simply het-met but clearly retains indicia of formal verse. He didn't use "whichever particular combination of syllables he found best" --he restricted himself to classical, metered rhythms and feet, though he varied the number of feet per line in a het-met way. I suppose the earliest origin of "free verse" must be the King James translation, no? But it's hard to believe that the KJ translators simply made up the entire technique by committee. More likely it came from the homiletic, rhetorical tradition of church sermons and the like.
RJ McCaffery RJ, there's a big difference between 150 years and 775 years, isn't there? About as big between 1400+ and 775 And the sort of "free verse" that dominates the last century or so actually has a lot more to do with WC Williams than Whitman. WCW owes a lot to Whitman. If you read "To Elsie" it's rather obvious. If we wanted to look at the past 25 years we could say that the Confessionals have more to do with the current trends in Free Verse than WCW does. But so what really? And blank verse, of course, is metered verse. Of course - at one point it was also a significant deviation from the dominant mode. Just as AS metrics were a significant deviation from Alliterative verse (although there was a melding of the two in certain poetries - Welsh for example.) I keep thinking that Marvell had a major BV poem. . .where is my brain this morning. The absence of rhyme isn't what defines free verse. The freedom is freedom from measure, not freedom from rhyme. "Free" verse, as most practioners would tell you is "not free"; it simply uses many different ways of constructing rhythms and cadence. It's essentially an "ends" art - whereby the rhythmic end is privledged over the means. So it's not really free from "measure" - it just uses a different measuring system. Which is why alliterative verse wasn't "free" either, since there was a set way of measuring lines. The "goal" of alliterative verse wasn't simply "measuring lines" in the sense (I believe) you mean it in - the goal was to create a certain rhythm, a way of expression. Much of alliterative verse was not written down. I think I know what you're driving at, though. The idea that people who bad-mouth free verse can claim that it was a brief, failed experiment or an aberration in the history of poetry, sort of like the literary equivalent of the New Deal as recollected by the ultra conservative right wing. "Now let's get back to rhyme, meter, and the end of the welfare state." Which, of course, is utter nonsense. Pretty much. I think Milton's "irregular verse" (e.g. Lycidas) is simply het-met but clearly retains indicia of formal verse. He didn't use "whichever particular combination of syllables he found best" --he restricted himself to classical, metered rhythms and feet, though he varied the number of feet per line in a het-met way. Well, free verse uses whatever rhythm is appropriate to the task at hand, whichever grouping of syllables work best. You don't, in short, allow yourself to be bound by a pre-existing template. You can also use any number of "formal" devices, including end-rhyme schemes, a regular syllabic count, regular stanzas, end-stopped lines, etc. You can even use traditional foot metrics if you'd like, although you're "free" to trump them by using an alternate which creates the effect you're looking for. The line between "free verse" and "formal verse" is very thin indeed. I suppose the earliest origin of "free verse" must be the King James translation, no? Possibly - depends on who you ask and what their definitions are.
Thomas Grady And there is always Christopher Smart. I have always wondered if Whitman read Smart and decided he could be uhm smarter! My free verse comment, by the way, was in reference to the British/American tradition. The first concerted rush of English free verse poems are the imagists at the turn of the century. Whitman is sort of an exception to the rule there for quite some time. After Whitman, in my Oxford Book of American Poetry (1950), the next major free verse poet is Edgar Lee Masters. And Amy Lowell--but she starts out as a formalist. Actually, I always thought Williams was much more interesting for his use of the American vernacular than for his typography or individual rhythms. Even HD and Pound and Amy Lowell and the imagists use a more "exalted" diction than Williams' plain speech. And I wrote that post on Williams because Ginger Sicari, who is new to the Gaz, and a terrific addition to the coterie here, is not crazy about WCW (I can understand that--for a long time I read the plum poem and thought WCW was a MAJOR charlatan). So, much of what I wrote comes out of a conversation with her about Williams and his poetry.
Ginger Sicari If RJ McCaffery's views with regard to the arbitrariness (mostly internet driven, imo) of putting free and formal verse in opposing camps is anything like a general sentiment, I think I'm really going to enjoy my time here. I feel like I should note my revised opinion of WCW, having finally read "Paterson." I think he gets more than a few things right in the long poem that he fails at in his shorter pieces. It's not anything I'd care to replicate in my own writing, but it did strike a chord with me as a reader, on a more an intuitive than intellectual level.
RJ McCaffery Tom- Yes - Christopher Smart. Like I said, I don't know where my brain is. Then also there's Hopkins, abandoning the traditional idea of metrical feet and working in sprung rhythm. Although he's not considered a major poet, Stephen Crane has some lovely small (free verse) poems which I'm pretty sure were written before Masters. If you want to broaden the scope a bit, the French poets were moving toward Free Verse (and Prose Poetry) before the main body of English poets. I think Hopkins makes an interesting case - his very best work held back because it was thought "too radical" by Bridges. You can only wonder at the level of censorship that existed within the poetic/literary community. Ginger- The division between free/formal verse isn't quite solely internet driven (it's there in the real world also). The happy news is that many contemporary poets are happy working in all modes of verse. It's only the radical fringe on both ends that gets bent out of shape. Unsurprisingly, I can't name a good poet (or, to be blunt, even a decent poet) that inhabits either of those radical fringes (not that there’s much of a radical fringe for “free verse only” – most of the self proclaimed Avnet-guard hate all poetry (including 99% of free verse) besides their own. On the formal side, now and then you get "a man of letters" or a versifier or a rabble rouser (out to canonize R.Wilbur, Disciple of Frost), but not really any poets that I'm aware of.
Clive Simpson Just to add my mostly self-educated five eggs here - Hopkins' sprung rhythm is actually a sort of metrical variant type of thing, with heavy leanings towards AS alliterative verse. His sonnets are pentametric. If you read his explication of the method, he doesn't abandon feet at all, merely redefines them. Talking of censorship, weren't Emily Dickinson's meagre amount of published-in-her-own-lifetime poems "fixed" by editors to get the metre, rhyme and punctuation "right"? Me - I've no time for the formal/free verse war. It's an American thing, anyway, that just doesn't exist over here in the UK. I guess you have idiots like Wakowski to thank for that, with her hysterical pronouncements about the unAmerican-ness of writing in measured lines.
Paul Croucher Great discussion. Did not vers libre originate (as RJ has suggested, in part) with Rimbaud, Laforgue and Gustave Kahn in the 1880s? Whitman's influence is a little more problematic, I think. Hopkins, after all thought him the author of "irregular rhythmic prose". A judgement not disputed by the central (English-language) modernist poets. Two quotes for your delectation. T.S. Eliot: My own verse is, as far as I can judge, nearer to the original meaning of vers libre than is any of the other types: at least, the form in which I began to write, in 1908 or 1909, was directly drawn from the study of Laforgue together with the later Elizabethan drama... I did not read Whitman until much later in life, and had to conquer an averion to his form, as well as to much of his matter, in order to do so. I am equally certain - it is indeed obvious - that Pound owes nothing to Whitman. (Introduction to the Selected Poems of Ezra Pound, 1928.) And here's Williams, in a letter to Kay Boyle in 1932: Whitman was a magnificent failure. He himself in his later stages showed all the terrifying defects of his own method. Whitman to me is one broom stroke and that is all. He could not go on. Nature, the Rousseauists who foreshadowed Whitman, the imitation of the sounds of the sea per se, are a mistake. Poetry has nothing to do with that. It is not nature. It is poetry. Whitman grew into senseless padding, bombast, bathos. His invention ended where it began. He is almost a satirist of his era, when his line itself is taken as the criterion. He evaporates under scrutiny - crumbling not into sand, surely, but into a moraine, sizable and impressive because of that. The line must, as a minimum, have a well-conceived form within which modifications may exist. Without this internal play upon the stops, it cannot achieve power. etc. (That second section of the letter is a direct follow-on from the first. It's just that I'm not sure how to indent a new paragraph...) On this score, Herbert Read's The True Voice of Feeling takes a close look at the origins of "free verse", and distinguishes it from the Whitman-Lawrence line, which he says is based on "figures of grammar" as opposed to "figures of speech". For all their undoubted "magnificence", Read (a close friend of Eliot's) is of the opinion that Whitman and Lawrence made essentially "prose contributions" (in a technical sense). I'd expect to get shouted down for even canvassing that view, in some quarters. Especially as it applies (by extension) to Allen Ginsberg. So I'll piss off quick, shouting behind me the proviso that Sir Herbert Read might be wrong! Just one more quote (okay, okay, I do tend to revel in the fact that neither the Brits nor Americans can rightly claim to have originated free verse). This from T.E. Hulme, the original imagist (along with F.S. Flint, circa 1908): I have no reverence for tradition. I came to the subject of verse from the inside rather than the outside. There were certain impressions which I wanted to fix. I read verse to find models, but I could not find any that seemed exactly suitable to express that kind of impression, except perhaps a few jerky rhythms of Henley, until I came to read French vers libre which seemed to exactly fit the case. (Appendix to Michael Roberts' T.E. Hulme, 1938)
Thomas Grady Clive: Yes, I believe ED only published seven poems during her lifetime--several of which family members submitted without her prior knowledge or permission. The most recent biography of ED goes into this in depth. Very well done bio. Can't recall the the author but the title is something like "My Wars Are Laid Away in Books." An amazon.com search using ED will find it quickly. And yes, the first editions of her poems featured cleaned up punctuation and lineation, along with several of her "bestial" rhymes smoothed out for a genteel public's consumption. I suppose if Alan Ginsberg can get a poem published talking about licking/worshipping his SM Master's boot, we can brave the audacity of unexpurgated Emily Dickinson. Just don't frighten the kiddies with all those scary slant rhymes. You know, considering all the brouhaha Wakowski caused, I would like to read the actual article. I wonder how much formalists have misrepresented her. Or maybe they weren't severe enough in their condemnation. Without reading the essay who can tell? I can't find it on the internet. Know anything about it? I would love to read it. RJ: Thank you for pointing out that the line between free and formal is rather anoretic, to put it mildly. And that good free verse is hardly "free" at all--it just has its own individual-to-that-particular-poem set of guidelines. Let's repeat what you said because I really think it is a wonderful way to think about free verse: "Free" verse, as most practioners would tell you is "not free"; it simply uses many different ways of constructing rhythms and cadence. It's essentially an "ends" art - whereby the rhythmic end is privledged over the means. So it's not really free from "measure" - it just uses a different measuring system. I should like to add one or two points here. I started writing metrical verse a little over 15 months ago. I absolutely refused to touch it before that--much for the reason Alba just told me SHE doesn't touch it (hi Alba! hope you don't mind, but what you said stayed with me): "It's too hard." Well, I think part of the reason for that is that we are no longer IMMERSED in accentual-syllabic meter the way a Keats or a Yeats was. So there is a sense of having to learn a whole new language from a distance, rather than having it babbling in our ears (my nephew is growing up bilingual, because my Cuban sister-in-law is pretty much only speaking Spanish to him. I wonder if I only read him iambic pentameter, would he speak that way? Hmmm....). But practice makes, if not perfect, then certainly more ease. Ask anyone who starts to write in meter: it gets MUCH MUCH easier the more you do it. I realise this is not exactly germaine to the discussion, but I did want to tell Alba that. I also think that I for one missed out NOT having that metrical backbone as a foundation. Having studied meter for a year, the discipline of learning to write in a metrical pattern does make you--ok, me at least--MUCH more aware of how free verse plays with rhythm. And it made me more disciplined about the rhythm of the free verse I write. But RJ's right. It isn't just willynilly capriciousness--something metricists would often have you believe. What is quite fascinating is to read someone like Crane or Eliot and see that metrical backbone operating--and see where that "freedom" comes in. It's an ebb and flow, not a rejection of one for the other. (I didn't bring up the French because, well, I do think there is a qualitative difference between vers libre and free verse, but I also realize that may be my own idiosyncratic take on it). Paul: Well you know, Whitman is an exceedingly idiosyncratic poet. The long lines, the use of amphora, the biblical cadences--no one else was AT THE TIME was using them, but compare a bit of Christopher Smart's poem to his cat to, say, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" (which I think is Whitman's best poem--it leaves me awe-stricken whenever I read it and I think, Well Tom, you might as well give it up and write business memos for a living). That's why I wonder if Whitman knew of Smart before he started "Song of Myself." The earliest Whitman is dreadful, flat and boring metrical verse. And a good 65% of Whitman is pretty--well let's be nice and say it doesn't work. So in that sense, I think WCW was right about him. But Paul--you also have to realize that Eliot and WCW had their own agenda and, also, their own not-inconsiderable egos. See, when I hear a statement like, to paraphrase, "Poetry is not nature," I have to laugh. It's such propaganda. Whenever you hear Poetry is...or Poetry isn't... I would suggest running to the stereo and putting on a cd of your choice. It will be much more entertaining to listen to. As far as the Read, well Lawrence was a Whitman disciple. But English writers were much more responsive to Whitman on an immediate level than Americans. I often find when a critic like Read makes these categorical imperatives and then tries to force writers to fit neatly into the categories, there is some basic flaw in the logic undergirding the entire system. But oh, those academic types have to publish something don't they? And in the case of Read, he too had his own agenda and ego. Can you explicate his view further? I would be interested in hearing it. Thanks!
Robert Schechter To quibble with the terminology, "free verse" is indeed "free" even though the poems often end up displaying observable patterns and cadences and repetitions and structures. Of course a free verse poem isn't "free" from everything --it still has to use language, etc.-- but it is free from the requirement to be written in meter. It is not free from the requirement to present the reader with something coherent, organized, integrated, and worthwhile. The idea that Whitman was writing "prose" strikes me as utterly ridiculous. I have never read any prose that sounds like Whitman, even vaguely, and I would reject any definition of poetry that wouldn't immediately and obviously include "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," "Song of Myself," "This Compost, "Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walk of dreams," and dozens of other masterpieces. We shouldn't define "poetry" in isolation, and then go out and see whether this text or that text fits the definition. We should start with what we know to be poetry --which for me simply must include Whitman, Dickinson, Frost, Wilbur, WC Williams, Shakespeare, Keats, Neruda, Parra, Borges, Ashbery, Jorie Graham, Billy Collins, etc.-- and then figure out what they have in common that could help us toward a definition.
Paul Croucher Tom The essay, though certainly not unappreciative of Whitman's achievement, is a fairly technical assessment of Whitman's lack of technical progeny (i.e. of his having had very little technical bearing on free verse). He dissects the nine-line sentence following "As I ebb'd with the ocean of life", for example, and concludes: A single sentence, it will be seen, depending for its structure, not on any inherent rhythm or spoken sound, but on a statement with its qualifying and dependent clauses. He goes on: I have no desire to deny Whitman his special virtues, but in so far as they are technical, they belong to the art of rhetoric rather than to the art of poetry. etc. As to Lawrence, after pointing out the ways in which he, as a diligent disciple of Whitman, followed suit, Read writes: Of the technique of free verse, as it was developing under his eyes, he [Lawrence] had, as Pound realized from the beginning, no grain of understanding. etc. That's about it, in a nutshell, Tom. I'm open to the idea that it's bollocks. Pound's statements re Whitman are ambivalent, at best. The way in which Whitman influenced Laforgue is more interesting. It's acknowledged in the three or four books I've read on the subject, though it's usually dismissed as having been technically negligible (more a matter of admiration for his lifestyle, his radicalism, etc.). If anyone's able to shed more light on that I'd be more than happy to stand corrected. Robert You're right. "Free verse" is a misnomer. Williams loathed the term. And Eliot said famously that "no verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job". We're stuck with it, unfortunately. After pages and pages of technical discussion Charles Hartman, in Free Verse: An Essay on Prosody, concludes (pretty obviously, I think) that poetry is to be distinguished from prose by means of lineation, and specifically by the turning (re-verse) at the end of the line, which gives the line its tautness and power. WCW for one thought Whitman's lines so slack (in that respect) that they didn't warrant the appellation "poetry". Given that you seem not to be able to countenance the idea of Whitman being removed from the anthologies, presumably great chunks from the King James Bible might be included? I'm being facetious. (*smiles*) The cadences in much of Walt are certainly music to my ears: The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof'd garret and harks to the musical rain. Man, that really sings. Interesting views to the contrary, though. Wouldn't you say? Cheers Paul
Clive Simpson Ah, that line of Whitman's is anapaestic heptameter to my ear - that's why it sings, Paul
Fred Longworth For a long time, I have been displeased with the word free. The word is denotatively and connotatively too rich. One can't get away from the meanings libertine and unfettered, which unfortunately send the message that any damn thing is poetry. The hell with rules. And thus, these days every damn thing calls itself poetry.
Robert Schechter I don't think I suggested the word "free" is a misnomer. I think it's the proper name when one understands the nature of the "freedom." That is, in free verse the writer is "free" of the necessity of rhyme, meter, and related formal conventions. But the successful free verse poet uses that freedom to create something that does indeed have a shape and a structure and patterns and sounds, etc. The reader doesn't experience the freedom in the same way as the writer did in the composition. The reader is stuck with however the poem turned out. The poet had a wider range of choices (arguably) in that he did not, for example, need the poem to turn out to be exactly 14 lines, but ultimately, for the reader, even a free verse poem turns out to have a set number of lines and to display patterns and forms regardless of the constraints the poet faced or didn't face.
RJ McCaffery Regarding the idea that the "free verse poet is free", I have to respond - "not really". In theory, yes, you can do anything with free verse, but once you commit to something on the page each subsequent element of the poem is defined against what comes before it (and what comes after it.) Granted, there's a wide variety of options/poetics available, but it's not like you can simply use anything at any point. Often, there's only one best choice at any given point. So while a poem may not need to be exactly 14 lines, it must be not one line longer nor one line shorter than its self-determined structure demands - fluff becomes obvious. Which is probably why most people can't write good free verse; either the structure does not crystalize or the poet fights against it and makes poor choices. As far as Hopkins goes - here are his words on the matter. Personally, I find much of what he says to lean towards "free verse" even though it is couched in terms of the AS system the victorians understood. While you can use the classical AS system in free verse (and many free verse poets do) Hopkin's line about feet of one to four syllables deployed *for effect* is pretty much the same justification for the "irregular" line of free verse. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) Poems. 1918. Author’s Preface. THE POEMS in this book are written some in Running Rhythm, the common rhythm in English use, some in Sprung Rhythm, and some in a mixture of the two. And those in the common rhythm are some counterpointed, some not. Common English rhythm, called Running Rhythm above, is measured by feet of either two or three syllables and (putting aside the imperfect feet at the beginning and end of lines and also some unusual measures, in which feet seem to be paired together and double or composite feet to arise) never more or less. Every foot has one principal stress or accent, and this or the syllable it falls on may be called the Stress of the foot and the other part, the one or two unaccented syllables, the Slack. Feet (and the rhythms made out of them) in which the stress comes first are called Falling Feet and Falling Rhythms, feet and rhythm in which the slack comes first are called Rising Feet and Rhythms, and if the stress is between two slacks there will be Rocking Feet and Rhythms. These distinctions are real and true to nature; but for purposes of scanning it is a great convenience to follow the example of music and take the stress always first, as the accent or the chief account always comes first in a musical bar. If this is done there will be in common English verse only two possible feet—the so-called accentual Trochee and Dactyl, and correspondingly only two possible uniform rhythms, the so-called Trochaic and Dactylic. But they may be mixed and then what the Greeks called a Logaoedic Rhythm arises. These are the facts and according to these the scanning of ordinary regularly-written English verse is very simple indeed and to bring in other principles is here unnecessary. But because verse written strictly in these feet and by these principles will become same and tame the poets have brought in licences and departures from rule to give variety, and especially when the natural rhythm is rising, as in the common ten-syllable or five-foot verse, rhymed or blank. These irregularities are chiefly Reversed Feet and Reversed or Counterpoint Rhythm, which two things are two steps or degrees of licence in the same kind. By a reversed foot I mean the putting the stress where, to judge by the rest of the measure, the slack should be and the slack where the stress, and this is done freely at the beginning of a line and, in the course of a line, after a pause; only scarcely ever in the second foot or place and never in the last, unless when the poet designs some extraordinary effect; for these places are characteristic and sensitive and cannot well be touched. But the reversal of the first foot and of some middle foot after a strong pause is a thing so natural that our poets have generally done it, from Chaucer down, without remark and it commonly passes unnoticed and cannot be said to amount to a formal change of rhythm, but rather is that irregularity which all natural growth and motion shews. If however the reversal is repeated in two feet running, especially so as to include the sensitive second foot, it must be due either to great want of ear or else is a calculated effect, the superinducing or mounting of a new rhythm upon the old; and since the new or mounted rhythm is actualy heard and at the same time the mind naturally supplies the natural or standard foregoing rhythm, for we do not forget what the rhythm is that by rights we should be hearing, two rhythms are in some manner running at once and we have something answerable to counterpoint in music, which is two or more strains of tune going on together, and this is Counterpoint Rhythm. Of this kind of verse Milton is the great master and the choruses of Samson Agonistes are written throughout in it—but with the disadvantage that he does not let the reader clearly know what the ground-rhythm is meant to be and so they have struck most readers as merely irregular. And in fact if you counterpoint throughout, since one only of the counter rhythms is actually heard, the other is really destroyed or cannot come to exist, and what is written is one rhythm only and probably Sprung Rhythm, of which I now speak. Sprung Rhythm, as used in this book, is measured by feet of from one to four syllables, regularly, and for particular effects any number of weak or slack syllables may be used. It has one stress, which falls on the only syllable, if there is only one, if there are more, then scanning as above, on the first, and so gives rise to four sorts of feet, a monosyllable and the so-called accentual Trochee, Dactyl, and the First Paeon. And there will be four corresponding natural rhythms; but nominally the feet are mixed and any one may follow any other. And hence Sprung Rhythm differs from Running Rhythm in having or being only one nominal rhythm, a mixed or ‘logaoedic’ one, instead of three, but on the other hand in having twice the flexibility of foot, so that any two stresses may either follow one another running or be divided by one, two, or three slack syllables. But strict Sprung Rhythm cannot be counterpointed. In Sprung Rhythm, as in logaoedic rhythm generally, the feet are assumed to be equally long or strong and their seeming inequality is made up by pause or stressing. Remark also that it is natural in Sprung Rhythm for the lines to be rove over, that is for the scanning of each line immediately to take up that of the one before, so that if the first has one or more syllables at its end the other must have so many the less at its beginning; and in fact the scanning runs on without break from the beginning, say, of a stanza to the end and all the stanza is one long strain, though written in lines asunder. Two licences are natural to Sprung Rhythm. The one is rests, as in music; but of this an example is scarcely to be found in this book, unless in the Echos, second line. The other is hangers or outrides, that is one, two, or three slack syllables added to a foot and not counting in the nominal scanning. They are so called because they seem to hang below the line or ride forward or backward from it in another dimension than the line itself, according to a principle needless to explain here. These outriding half feet or hangers are marked by a loop underneath them, and plenty of them will be found. The other marks are easily understood, namely accents, where the reader might be in doubt which syllable should have the stress; slurs, that is loops over syllables, to tie them together into the time of one; little loops at the end of a line to shew that the rhyme goes on to the first letter of the next line; what in music are called pauses [symbol], to shew that the syllable should be dwelt on; and twirls [symbol], to mark reversed or counterpointed rhythm. Note on the nature and history of Sprung Rhythm—Sprung Rhythm is the most natural of things. For (1) it is the rhythm of common speech and of written prose, when rhythm is perceived in them. (2) It is the rhythm of all but the most monotonously regular music, so that in the words of choruses and refrains and in songs written closely to music it arises. (3) It is found in nursery rhymes, weather saws, and so on; because, however these may have been once made in running rhythm, the terminations having dropped off by the change of language, the stresses come together and so the rhythm is sprung. (4) It arises in common verse when reversed or counterpointed, for the same reason. But nevertheless in spite of all this and though Greek and Latin lyric verse, which is well known, and the old English verse seen in Pierce Ploughman are in sprung rhythm, it has in fact ceased to be used since the Elizabethan age, Greene being the last writer who can be said to have recognised it. For perhaps there was not, down to our days, a single, even short, poem in English in which sprung rhythm is employed—not for single effects or in fixed places—but as the governing principle of the scansion. I say this because the contrary has been asserted: if it is otherwise the poem should be cited.
Clive Simpson I dunno, RJ - I've read that before and he doesn't sound like a free-verser to me. Also, there's nothing free, libre, unmetered, whatever, about this: - Quote:Isn't that fabulous, by the way?
RJ McCaffery I dunno, Clive - I've read the thread and can't find anyone suggesting that Hopkins was a "free-verser." By Clive Simpson I dunno RJ - weren't it you what said summat like this: - I find much of what he says to lean towards "free verse" Scroll up me old china to see yer own words in situ. I din't mean 'e wrote the bleedin' stuff, did I, I meant 'e din't fink like one, matey. Robert Schechter To truly strict formalists, everything that doesn't fit their rules amounts, at best, to free verse. Somehow or another, though, even the strictest formalists welcome Hopkins into the fold, with a cautionary word to others not to try to imitate his unique approach. The thing about Hopkins metrics that may cause one to think free verse is that it's much harder to scan than traditional formal verse. Hopkins himself had to resort, quite often, to marking the stresses rather than to allow them to emerge as a natural aspect of pronunciation, cadence and speech. Indeed, how else could one tell whether a given Hopkins foot is one, two, three or four syllables long? Scansion is arbitrary enough in traditional A/S verse, but in Hopkins' verse it takes place only at the barest, intuitive level. That his verse eludes metrical analysis doesn't mean it's bad, or that it's free. It's often magnificent, and its metrical soul is hard to ignore. RJ McCaffery If you kept on reading you'd probably have been able to figure out why I wrote what I did. I'm not suggesting Hopkins either wrote free verse or was a “free verser”. I am suggesting that a number of his arguments for Sprung Rhythm prefigure arguments for Free Verse, and in that sense, his arguments might be said to "lean towards" Free Verse. In fact, if you follow what Hopkins is prescribing – he pretty much explodes the idea of a syllabic line and the idea of the standard classical foot: Sprung Rhythm, as used in this book, is measured by feet of from one to four syllables, regularly, and for particular effects any number of weak or slack syllables may be used. and in fact the scanning runs on without break from the beginning, say, of a stanza to the end and all the stanza is one long strain, though written in lines asunder. “Feet” can range to any number of syllables (it follows that lines can run to any number of syllables). Some feet can “cross” lines. Scanning runs across lines. The unifying theme is that Rhythm (result) is more important than strict metricality – and there is no strict prescription for rhythm; it arises from the specific and unique patterning of syllables in each line, shaped not by simple binary (stressed/unstressed) or a classical foot pattern, but in the actual spoken groups of words interacting with each other. Again, this does not mean the effects can't be mapped out in a completed poem, but that there's no prescription (regarding number of syllables and placement of stresses) to follow if you're writing Sprung Rhythm. You can certainly point out that Hopkins wrote in the regular AS forms of his day, and quite brilliantly as well. You can also argue that he conceived of sonic units within the line as “feet” and that he did not abandon the idea of “the line” as carrying a certain amount of stressed syllables (although this is not very clear in his introduction). As to Hopkins not “thinking like a free verser,” I don’t know precisely know how “free versers” think (as opposed to?), but when I write free verse I’m very aware of the groupings of stressed and unstressed syllables, the play between them, and that effect on the overall rhythm of the line and cadence of the poem. (So, yes, you could say that I think in terms of “feet and lines” when I write free verse.) It’s not so very far from Hopkins’ writing: Sprung Rhythm. . .is the rhythm of all but the most monotonously regular music to Pounds injunction: As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.
Robert Schechter "to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome" Interesting metaphor. The danger of Pound's dictum might be to make some people feel that they are not answerable to beat or meter but can defend whatever they write as a "musical phrase." But the greatest musical compositions tend to have, along with their musical phrases, a time signature and a beat that can be delineated with a metronome. Yes, those writing meter should be careful not to sound too sing-songy and confuse the metronome for the music, but the answer isn't to throw out the metronome. Kay Day Um. Small comment. Talk to someone in English. You'll hear stressed and unstressed syllables. There is no speaking English without some sort of rhythm, although it is not the sort of rhythm we think of in formal poetry of course. There is no good poetry without sound. All good free verse has it, by virtue of vowel and consonant sounds and stresses within key words. You just have to think outside the meter, so to speak. Just thought I'd toss that in. Robert Schechter Just because there are stressed and unstressed syllables, it doesn't mean that there must be some sort of rhythm. Rhythm implies some sort of regularly recurring patterns of stress, and artless prose often lumbers on in a way that simply can't be called rhythmical even though it is composed of stressed and unstressed syllables. I'll agree, though, that metrical verse (as well as much free verse) attempts to exploit the stress/unstress nature of English by finding ways of making naturally spoken stress/unstress patterns fall into meter or rythmic cadences. Richard Jordan Robert, But definitely the English language has a natural rhythm to it, even (especially) in the sense of your requirement of recurring patterns of stress. In fact there have been scientific studies, many of them, where different languages are analyzed via spectral transforms (i.e, looking at the frequencies of waveforms associated with spoken language). These studies demonstrate that when it comes to regularities in stress patterns, English is by far one of the most "rhythmic" languages. I.e, the same patterns of stresses occur over & over again--in prose by the likes of Hemingway, in newspaper articles, in technical memos and instruction manuals (written by people who certainly are not thinking of rhythm). The similarities of the frequency of stressed and unstressed syllables seems striking. But it isn't when you consider that English is a stress language. That is, a language which tends to emphasize one part of a word over another. The "common words and phrases" in "common order" occur with the highest frequency of all words/phrases in any article of prose. That explains it. What makes poetry successful (rhythm-wise) is clever exploitation of the natural rhythm, perhaps even a breaking away from the natural rhythm. Not surprisingly, other natural "stress languages" come out as highly rhythmic.
RJ McCaffery Good points all. Let me leap in and say this now (because I still hear it now and again, not because Rich implied it): Iambic Pentameter does not show up as any kind of "natural rhythm" in English. This is one of those urban myths that get passed around. Usual caveats - Yes, a great number of magnificent poems have been written and will be written in iambics, including IP. Yes, I like poetry written in AS form. Yes, I write it myself. Yes, you can "scan" a great deal of spoken English as "imabic" - including a rather large number of free verse lines (but this is unsurprising since as Kay and Richard poined out, you always get "stress" every couple of syllables anyway. If you wanted to you could also scan it as "trochaic".)
Robert Schechter I agree, RJ. I think that IP is "natural" for a different reason. Although there are many successful poems in longer measures, it seems that the human mind/ear cannot be counted on to keep track of more than five metrical beats per line. When lines are more than five beats, the ear tends to (a) lose track of which syllables the beats are supposed to fall on, or (b) start to group the "excess" beats into the next line. So what's "natural" about IP is that it's the longest reliable measure in English that the reader/auditor can reliably be counted on to hear. Though the ear can hear shorter measures quite easily, the advantage of using the longer measure is that there's more room within the line for the poet to work. P.S.-- I just came across this on the web, by Tim Steele (who wrote a wonderful book on meter), which says something I think we all know, but says it well enough for me to paste it here:
Quote: For more by Steele, go to this article. Puanani Sandabar Very interesting/informative thread, All. "Iambic Pentameter does not show up as any kind of "natural rhythm" in English. This is one of those urban myths that get passed around." Whew! What a relief it was to finally see that in print, RJ! Honest. When the scattered dust particles begin to coalesce into a poem-attempt for me they hardly ever show up as IP. They're generally in lines of dactyllic or anapestic tetrameter/pentameter/hexameter.
Anyhow, all of a sudden I feel much less abnormal. "So what's "natural" about IP is that it's the longest reliable measure in English that the reader/auditor can reliably be counted on to hear." Eeeek! Back to abnormal-mode once again! Maybe it's just because I talk so damned fast, Robert, but on the rare occasions when I do write in iambs, the thought-chunks/lines are generally 6/7/8 feet; every now and then eleven. Weird, huh? (And ha! Wanna hear something even weirder? The way I finally figured out how to do the enjambment-thing that people seem to like to see in sonnets/etc was to loop what in original drafts was hexameter/ heptameter/ octameter back on itself in order to "fake" the shorter, more highly-regarded/beloved/standard IP. And more recently, because I'm completely hopeless at writing "real" free verse, I've begun to toss line breaks into my relentlessly metered lines to make 'em "look" like they're free verse. Ha! How's that for a coupla AS-backwards approaches?!)
Clive Simpson Pua - you make an interesting point - whenever I make a conscious effort to hear the rhythms of people's speech, it always sounds more anapaestic than iambic to me. Maybe that's a regional thing. As to writing poetry, I think in pentameter. I believe there is something natural, almost inevitable about it. Richard Jordan As it turns out, the percentages of stressed and unstressed syllables in a "typical" piece of English prose are split pretty close to 50-50., with the unstressed syllables having the edge. It's actually kind of fun to pick an arbitrary article from a newspaper, say, and work out it's "rhythm". But, the stresses/slacks don't appear as regular iambs as a rule. So yes, iambic is not the "typical" rhythm in the English language. As for the "typical" meter. I don't think it makes much sense if we're talking about prose or conversation. That only makes sense in the presence of linebreaks, right? Unless we're defining a typical unit of prose (i.e via number of syllables). That seems unnatural. Anyway, RJ is right that iambic is not really "natural". I've always found that. I agree with you Pua! Robert Schechter I think what's natural about English speech is that (a) all multisyllabic words have one syllable that gets the primary stress, and (b) we rarely want to say/hear more than three unstressed syllables in a row. These rules would indicate why the "foot" system of scanning is useful, since all the common feet assume that we'll get at least one stress for every three syllables. I guess I disagree with Richard in that I don't think there's a 50-50 split in English prose. I'd say (though I don't actually know this) that the unstressed syllables are significantly more abundant than the stressed ones. Probably (I'm guessing) closer to 60-65% unstressed. One factor that's been ignored in this conversation is something that Steele treats at length in his book and somewhat in the article whose link I posted. That is, not all "stressed" syllables are said with the same stress or volume. Steele scans each syllable not just for metrical stress, but also for "volume" on a scale of 1 (softest) to 4 (loudest). Interestingly, he shows us many lines in which some of the "unstressed" syllables are actually "louder" than some of the "stressed" syllables. All in the same line! The reason, of course, involves one of the key concepts of meter that beginners often overlook: when doing a metrical scansion, stress is determined relative to adjacent syllables and not in the abstract or in relation to syllables a couple of "feet" away. Steele explains this much better than I've just done, so anyone who doesn't get my quickie explanation really ought to read the Steele. For me, Steele's book was a huge eye-opener that helped me quite a bit. Paul Croucher Apropos of which (from Williams' "Heel & Toe to the End"):
Then he returned Aren't the second and third lines iambic? Or at least, given the line breaks, a disguised iambic? I've always thought this one of his most beautiful lines: What end but love, that stares death in the eye? (Patterson, p. 106) This from the WCW who could write: "We do not live in a sonnet world; we do not live even in an iambic world; certainly not in a world of iambic pentameters." Maybe it's Eliot's "ghost of a metre" lurking? Or at least Eliot's idea that freedom can't be recognised unless it "appears against a background of artificial limitation"? Metrics isn't an area in which I feel all that competent... So I'd be interested if anyone can throw more light on those queries... Specifically re the "naturalness", or otherwise, of those lines. "Heel & Toe to the End" is WCW's pretty snazzy "commentary" on his theory of measure. It's the second-last poem in his Collected, so in some ways it's his final say... What the heck, I'll enjoy typing it out... And the context might help others in ascertaining whether or not those lines are (intentionally?) iambic... ____________________
Heel & Toe to the End
Richard Jordan Robert, the split is more like 57% unstressed, 43% stressed (based on studies). So not 50-50, but not too far off. I was being generous on the side of stressed in my "rounding off". And strictly speaking, it is closer to the 60% unstressed than an even split. So yes, you are pretty darn close in agreement with the articles I'm thinking of! I'll see if I can track down some articles on this that are available online and post a link. The articles I read were written in the 40's & 50's, so I'm not sure... Very good point about "stress volume". I'm fascinated by the "natural rhythm" and sounds of language. I will track down Steele's book. Thanks!
Puanani Sandabar "..we rarely want to say/hear more than three unstressed syllables in a row." Not to appear contrary or anything, but I find one of the most pleasing rhythms around to be: Ba ba ba ba/ Ba ba ba ba/ Ba ba ba ba/ Baaa
I always forget what those are called.
RJ McCaffery Every so often a thread thought dead comes roaring back. There are some very good points here. Steele's a good read, yes, but I'd caution anyone going into it that, for all his innovation, he's essentially an AS apologist. For example, in that article Robert cited, Steele writes: Because iambic rhythm suits English speech more naturally and flexibly than other rhythms, it has been the principal mode of English poetry from the time of Geoffrey Chaucer (14th c.) to the present day. Actually, AS verse was imported after the Norman Conquest to a language (Old/Middle English) which was doing just fine with alliterative verse. There was a radical change in politics, society and even the language itself - the adoption/popularity of AS verse is strongly tied in with these factors, not because the poets of the past 1400 years were suddenly trumped by "a better" or “more natural” system. Further, for a great many reasons, it's impossible to say that "iambic rhythm" suits English speech more naturally than anything else. I don't have time to lay out the usual points in detail here; basic linguistics blows that out of the water though. (Usual caveats for the freakish/dogmatic: Yes, you can write amazing poetry in AS verse, Yes, amazing poetry has been written in AS verse, Yes, AS verse in itself is a valueable mode of poetical composition.) As long as you keep this element of Steele in mind he's well worth looking into, in no small part because of his clairity in laying out his arguments. When he gets down to the nuts and bolts, you never get the sense that he's trying to fudge something to make his arguments work – I have a great deal of respect for that. Something else to point out about Steele: he's not the first person to suggest that the stress is relative. (It’s a rather commonly know fact.) Nor is he the first person to come up with alternate systems of scansion/notation. To be honest, I have not read all of Steele's work, so he may touch on what follows, even though I’ve never seen it brough up in discussions of his writing. The other obvious thing to consider in light of traditional metrics is that the line is filled with pauses of variable duration, as well as syllables of variable stress. These pauses often occur for what could be called “purely” gramatical or syntaxtical reasons and have an amazing impact on the actual rhythm of the poem. Classical scansion does not account for these pauses and in many cases entirely obscures them. My own system of scansion (which also uses variable stress) divides the line into “phrasal units” (feet if you will) based not on an arbitrary division of syllables by number count, but by the placement and duration of the actual pauses in “normal” speech. You can actually map it out with sound recording software on a computer. One of the “rules” is that you almost never “divide” words into separate feet – which makes sense, words, even though made of syllables, come out “whole” when actually spoken. The acual “composition” of the words also has a great bearing on when and where pauses fall – depending on how the words are linked phonetically there will be a tendency to pause or a tendency to “glide” them together. In general, the harder phonemical endings/beginnings produce a greater number of phrasal units per line (i.e. there are more pauses). You can also measure stress via recording software – and it’s interesting to note which words carry stress when actually spoken. Of course all this must be grounded in the poem as a whole (the basic reason behind “free verse”) so I don’t try to come up with a “regular” kind of rhythm that runs through the entire poem beginning to end (although one can do so quite easily – doggerel). Instead I try to use “what’s there” in terms of “natural” expression as a touchstone for more variable areas of the poem/line to either downplay or reinforce. For example, if a character in a poem uses the word “Nothing” to anwser a question in a bitter tone, the first syllable carries the greater stress and there will nearly always be a pause after the word, no matter what follows. To emphasize and echo the bitter “Nothing”, it makes sense to repeat either the word “Nothing, Nothing . . .” or repeat the pattern of stress and pause the word makes – “Nothing, Not even. . .” Of course, alliteration and assonance come into play; in the second example the primary vowels shift up the scale, priming us for a higher pitched (and empahtic) word. Now, none of this is “opposed” to classical scansion – you can still identify poems written in this manner as “scanning iambicly.” For that matter you can still write (intentionally) “in meter” while paying attetnion other things as well. For me though there are two ways to go about it – either you a priori import something “to” the language or you can a posteriori map the actual patterns of speech and manipulate them. I think classical scansion is a useful starting point; it has the virtue of getting practioners to think in terms of stress, it’s easy to learn, it’s easy to write in. It’s also limiting in its assumptions (I can’t tell you the number of people who express relief when you tell them “just because it scans “iambicly” does not mean it “sounds” iambic.) Then too there’s the idea that the possibilies of composition have to be bound into regularly recurring feet: I have written lines which contain five strong stresses and no weak ones – it’s not something to compose an entire poem in, but it’s nice to have the “freedom” to do so, even though I’m bound by its effect within the poem as a whole.
Clive Simpson It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. Derek Attridge opened my eyes to foot scansion's shortcomings. Traditional foot scansion just confuses people even more than they need to be. Stress/unstress and patterns thereof - that's all you need to know. Five beats - pentameter; four beats - tetrameter and so on. Trochees and spondees and bacchics, oh my! They don't really suit English verse, having been imported from a system of prosody - classical quantitative verse - that relied more on the length of the syllable rather than the stress. Robert Schechter
Quote:Actually, it's debatable whether words come out "whole" when actually spoken. In designing speech recognition software, the problem has always been how to teach computers to know when one word ends and another begins. In natural speech, we don't tend to pause between individual words. For example, "In natural" generally comes out "innatural" as we consolidate the two n's that are back to back. Pua, can you give me an example of poetry that scans Ba ba ba ba/ Ba ba ba ba/ Ba ba ba ba/ Baaa? RJ McCaffery Actually, it's debatable whether words come out "whole" when actually spoken. I'm not sure I'm following you - are you saying that in multisyllabic words there are significant pauses? Something as significant in duration as a pause between words? In designing speech recognition software, the problem has always been how to teach computers to know when one word ends and another begins. In natural speech, we don't tend to pause between individual words. For example, "In natural" generally comes out "innatural" as we consolidate the two n's that are back to back. True - this is one of the principles that guides the development of "feet" in my poetics (i.e. the chunks of sound between the pauses). I wrote: The actual “composition” of the words also has a great bearing on when and where pauses fall – depending on how the words are linked phonetically there will be a tendency to pause or a tendency to “glide” them together. In general, the harder phonemical endings/beginnings produce a greater number of phrasal units per line (i.e. there are more pauses). So the example of "in-natural" would serve to illustrate the gliding together of words. "Sandy beach" would serve as an example as two words which did not glide together (although there is a kind of carry-over from the terminal sound of "sandy" to the dominant vowel sound of "beach". A more blatant example would be "left button". Puanani Sandabar "Pua, can you give me an example of poetry that scans Ba ba ba ba/ Ba ba ba ba/ Ba ba ba ba/ Baaa?"
Ha! Nahh. Probably not "real poetry" Robert. Let’s see:
Dash-ing through the this-tle patch, E-liz-a-bett-a, screams
Ha! Hell I dunno, Robert. Steele et al would say I’m slippin’/skippin’ over the secondary stresses, the stresses that have less volume; that there are actually seven stresses (of varying intensity) per line here rather than four. In reality it should probably be scanned like so, eh?
DASH-ing through the THIS-tle patch, E-LIZ-a-bett-a,
SCREAMS Yes, it’s true that crazy-Pu’s a doggerel-machine!
Robert Schechter Pua, it's like something you and I discussed somewhere on another thread here or on Erato, I can't remember which. Often in heptameter it's possible to find four beats per line that seem to want to be hit pretty hard, with another three beats somehow willing to step back a bit. But to me ear, the lines you offer are plainly heptameter. The stresses you are missing aren't all secondary stresses, though. For example, "through" is just one syllable. And you were willing to suppress the stress on "patch", which is arguably a pretty meaty and important word in the line that should command its own beat. I hear the same thing, so I'm not saying you're wrong. But I think, ideally, one ought to hear both things at the same time, with the heptameter producing an appealing counterpoint to the simultaneous "tetrameter" that you and I both hear as well. I'd like to hear/read some genuine expert speak about this phenomonon. No one will convince me that it doesn't exist, but I'd like to hear someone dress it up in the proper lingo. The first of your two lines is nice. I like how "thisle" and "elizabetta" go together, a union made possible by the stress patterns you've used. peter stewart richards I think Pua's first scansion is on the money, The second line is less definitely so, with e for evil calling out a stress and the comma after buffalo setting up an iambic sound after itself. Nevertheless, an alternation of primary and secondary stress seems to be the pattern. I arrive at this sort of scansion/conclusion by listening to a voice in my head reading the thing, rather than by reading it out loud. This has the advantage(s) of not disturbing others or getting me extra funny looks, of avoiding the inherent problem of diction in my own voice which is often just a smidgeon less perfect than the voice I imagine and even, in the case of some poems, of enabling the application of the brogue of authors such as Keats and Burns or even the godawful drawl that I associate with Whitman. When reading, or thinking about analysing (eeucch), Hopkins, I think it's well to have a little Welshman in your head to read it for you. Ordinary English sounds like muttering in comparison. I would suggest, albeit with no authority whatever, that Hopkins is primarily using natural speach rhythm.
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