Quote:
Originally Posted by Allen Tice
We can both be right in our practice.
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Hi Allen! I want to acknowledge our disagreement, and simply note that I hope my bracketing "truths about meter" make clear why I am happy to allow that we are both right in our practice. Meter is a tool for doing things with the sonic properties of language. We are (often) trying to do different things with those properties; naturally we will have a different relation to meter. I would never insist that my way of relating to meter is the right way. (I
would, and would
often, insist that is a better way than I often see being used for ends similar to mine.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jonathan James Henderson
I don't entirely follow here; perhaps some examples would help. It seems perhaps you're saying that meter should be a spice that's thrown in rather than the main dish from which variations or "natural speech" deviates from?
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No, sorry for the unclarity. I am fine with poems that are wholly metrical throughout. I'm talking about how to scan them: I think scansion (in the case of regularly metered poems!) should capture the base pattern underlying a line, but not the full details of its realization. Your own example line is a great instance of what I mean:
Bright star, Would I were steadfast as thou art
In its original context, I think there is really only one defensible way to scan this line:
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art
The opening foot could be either an iamb or a trochee; I think it's gotta be the former
in this context because the star is being addressed, while "bright" merely modifies it. It's going to take a stronger stress. It's a very heavy iamb, yes—but that's rhythmic, not metrical variation.
The second foot has to be an iamb because of the I/thou contrast; that forces the stress onto "I". The third foot is an obvious iamb.
Then the last two feet combine into a double iamb, again because the I/thou contrast demands a stress on "thou" that dominates the meter's tendency to promote "as". So here we have the spondee that proves the rule as it were: pseudo-spondees in English largely appear as part of double iambs (or double trochees in falling meter).
While I can see the reasoning behind most of your scansion (however strongly I disagree with it), I gotta say that I think pronouncing "steadfast" as a spondee is just deranged. It's a natural trochee (but displaced in the poem across two feet). If the line were as follows:
Bright star, Would I were steadfast as a cart
The "as" would take a noticeably stronger stress than "-fast". I genuinely cannot imagine what you are hearing here. I don't really know how to argue for this (beyond citing the dictionary, which will confirm that 'steadfast' in isolation is a trochee)—I too can only trust my ear. And I cannot rule out that my ear is no superior to yours, which hears differently, however much I might like to. Which is why in the end any strong opinion about meter turns into crankery. But I do so enjoy mucking about in the crankery, so thanks for the opportunity.
In the background of this is again my conception of what makes scansion a useful tool: it's that it shows the base similarity underlying both the Keats line and a line like, I dunno
The cat had sat upon the gnatty mat.
or
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Basically the same base pattern (except the double iamb substitution);
highly variable rhythms.
Pope is of course the master at illustrating the range of rhythms you can get within a single consistent meter.