[Tony Barnstone]

Hey Folks,

My life has been so busy for so long that all I can do is lurk around the edges of this forum now and again, but tonight I've been thinking a bit about a little technical question that's been nagging at me and I thought I'd throw it into the arena for the lions to chew at a bit.

I've been thinking about how to make iambics more condensed, more pithy, and so of course have been using lots of headless feet to start off my lines, but sometimes I do strange things, such as doing a double iamb the first unaccented syllable of which is dropped, something like this, to make up an example on the fly:

(x) the / bland sky / that bel/lies down/ at dusk

And sometimes, I go headless after a caesura or full stop, like this:

The mu/-shu pork? / (x) Chick / en on / the stove?

And sometimes I do a headless double iamb after a mid-line full stop, like this:

The li /quid night/ seeps in. / (x) The / glass dreams.

And then I'm tempted to trim further, maybe even have a double-headless foot for a double-iamb (i.e., a pyrrhic-less spondee):

(x) (x) / bland sky/ that bel/lies down /at dusk

(x) mu/-shu pork? / (x) Chick / en on / the stove?

(x) li /quid night/ seeps in. / (x) The / glass dreams.

I think that this stuff is stuff I can get away with, but, truly, I'm making the rules up as I go.

Whatcha think?

Best, Tony

[Maryann Corbett]

Tony, thanks for asking these great questions.

So much depends (and not on red wheelbarrows). If the iambic pulse is really clear surrounding the lines that take liberties, I'll look for any possible way to hear the line as having five pulses, even if it means leaving a blank, as in your examples.

The only one of your examples that gives me pause is this one:

(x) (x) / bland sky/ that bel/lies down /at dusk

Now "bland" takes a long time to say, so this particular instance is more arguably a real spondee than many other examples might be. But speaking more generally, it can be tough to hear five feet in an eight-syllable line. To hear this as actual pentameter, rather than hearing two blanks I'm probably going to hear a semi-syllable in the voiced sound at the end of the word:

(x) BLA| nd SKY | that BEL | lies DOWN | at DUSK

The risk is that the reader, in the habit of expecting a less-stressed syllable at the start of a line, and of hearing an adjective as a little lighter than its noun, will hear only four feet in this line

bland SKY that BEL lies DOWN at DUSK

It seems to me that Ciardi's translations of Dante use a similarly free approach to pentameter in order to hew close to the meaning while keeping the idiom modern. Nemerov objected, but most people have kept right on liking C's approach.

That's what I think. I know, though, that when I first starting hanging around here I caught large amounts of heck from Alan Sullivan for the looseness of my lines. So I think there'll be lots different reads on this.

[Ed Shacklee]

Tony,

I'm sorry to be rushing off to work, as this is really interesting -- it's fun to see the options laid out this way. My short answer is, naturally: whatever works.

All stresses aren't equal, and other factors come into play, such as using words of different origins (i.e., Anglo Saxon and French) that tend to roll off the tongue differently. Some poets may (sometimes) find these differences enough. For me, though, I find I like to break up a line now and then -- maybe too much -- when it starts to feel like I'm a metro gnome. Crowding two stresses together at the beginning or the end of a line, or a headless iamb after a caesura, are particularly temptations. But these aren't the thoughts of someone who is a technical master, or a scholar: just the thoughts of someone who's interested, and glad to listen in on the discussion.


Best,

Ed

[Tony Barnstone]

Hi Folks,

Thanks for the thoughts. About "bland sky," yes, that's the danger, and it goes back to the question of whether there really is a spondee or not. For me, if you put a comma between two hard syllables, like "harsh, bleak," it clearly is a spondee, or if the difficulty of pronouncing the two syllables quickly ("nd + sk") creates a caesura, then the two syllables don't run together and thus one doesn't need to be dominant in order to modulate the voice and keep from shouting.

My general approach is, well, I know it CAN be read another way, but the meter is telling my readers to read it MY way, so I get the benefit of the doubt (assuming, that is, that I get the benefit of the doubt!)

Anyhoo, these are my thoughts. You are so right that that's the troubled case.

Yours, T

[Tim Murphy]

Don't sweat it Tony. As Maryann says, so long as the pentameter footprint is clearly established, these are no problem. And iambic stomp is BORING.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Tony Barnstone

I think that this stuff is stuff I can get away with, but, truly, I'm making the rules up as I go.

Tony,

It would take a while to convince me that spondees actually exist, but that's a discussion for another day. I liked Maryann's red wheelbarrow joke, precisely because it's relevant, since your position seems to be heading for his variable foot. If Williams is right when he says 'there's no such thing as free verse,' a position I tend to agree with, the natural next step is to look at the "spaces" (his term, not mine), and find variability there, which is what you seem to be doing, unless I'm misunderstanding.

The problem I have is making 'useful sense' of it. I think you've got the right approach, looking at practice to draw conclusions, instead of trying to overlay rules of personal taste onto the work. But this is the same problem Williams had: when the definition is by nature variable, how can one define practice with any certainty? Even talking about it becomes difficult: when does the double headless use become tetrameter? When does it become simplified or simplistic hetmet? Everytime I consider this, I decide the only thing to do is renounce pragmatism, and simply appreciate the effect. Maybe that's the most pragmatic solution of all?

Thanks,

Bill

[Wintaka]

Tony:

After stipulating that analyzing lines in isolation is a mug's game I'd say that one or two of these examples would be dealbreakers for me if I were an editor or a contest judge.

(x) the / bland sky / that bel/lies down/ at dusk

IME, dropping syllables usually involves leaving stressed/promoted ones behind. This is more true of lame feet than acephalous ones, though. For example, I wouldn't bat an eye at this one:

The mu/-shu pork? / (x) Chick / en on / the stove?

IMHO, this next one occurs too late in the line:

The li /quid night/ seeps in. / (x) The / glass dreams.

...which, coupled with the missing stressed syllable in that foot, would be too much for me.

Dropping two syllables isn't a problem in trinary rhythms. We see a lot of that in Byron's anapestic tetrameter "Bride of Abydos":

[x] [x] Know | ye the land | of the ced|ar and vine,

Dropping an entire foot of a binary might get a reader thinking of het-met and me thinking of the next poem in the pile:

(x) (x) / bland sky/ that bel/lies down /at dusk

On the plus side, the two separate drops work well in a list:

(x) mu/-shu pork? / (x) Chick / en on / the stove?

...as it did for Shakespeare here:

The best | of men | have sung | your at | tributes,
Breasts, | lips, | eyes, | and gold | en hair!

...noting that neither example involves a 4th or 5th foot.

I could be wrong but I get the sense that you may be applying a principle of accentual meter (i.e. a fixed number of stresses per stich) to accentual-syllabic meter (i.e. a fixed number of feet per stich).

Regards,

Colin

[Carol Taylor]

They all sound fine to me, Tony. If anything, you're spending too much time on labels.

Carol

[R. Nemo Hill]

This one especially occurs again and again in my work:

The li /quid night/ seeps in. / (x) The / glass dreams.

I find in it the natural meter of my language.

Nemo

[Allen Tice]

Spondees !! Glass dreams in a bland sky. Of course that could be read as an antibacchius followed by a bacchius, if we knew what those hippogryphs were. (They subsist entirely on plums.)