[John Riley]

Living Will

This is for when you first hear the clink of chains rattling,
or the release and squeeze of wild wind collapsing,
or the words you speak become fast hours,
or the night says to stop, stand tall, and flare,

or a crow turns, flies toward two ravens,
or you are left empty of what was creation,
or you take what you need from the wrong book,
or you are seized by the nose, a fish on a hook.

[Yves S L]

John,

I reckon you can kind of get away with approximating rhyme and meter with shorter lines, but with longer lines there is more time and space for things for things to sound incoherent. I also question the abstractness of L6 which might work as a contrast to the concreteness of the other lines, but for me does not quite work because I don't reckon the line is strong enough on its own, nor does it have the meter behind it that would make it sound more convincing.

[Mark McDonnell]

approximating rhyme and meter

I couldn’t disagree more. There are those poems that are obviously working in or striving for a very specific metre or rhyme scheme and therefore it’s usually clear when said metre or rhyme scheme hits a bump in the road. That’s where the nuts and bolts of metrical poetry forums can come in handy. And then there are poems, like this one, whose echoes and rhythms might be less easily discernible. Is this a metrical poem? I feel a pulse and a lilt when I read it. Could I analyse its metre and make every line conform to metrical "rules"? Possibly not, I see no reason to try.* (see below) Do I sometimes wish the met and non-met boards were merged to accommodate this grey area? Yes, but I can see the objections. Are there hundreds of examples of well-known, outstanding poems that fall into this grey area? Yes.

*Does this poem feel absolutely right when I read it? Yes.

[Mary Meriam]

People keep telling me to sign a living will. I'd rather give them your poem.

I wouldn't call this metrical, because there isn't a repeating pattern. I think it's important, educationally, to make the distinction and have separate forums.

Or maybe I'm wrong. The poem seems to pulse and lilt with sporadic spondee-ishness:
chains rattling,
wild wind
fast hours,
stand tall

crow turns
two ravens,
left empty
wrong book,

If this is a metrical form, I'm not aware of it, which could make it John's invention.

[Roger Slater]

Free verse poems also have a "pulse and a lilt," Mark. All good poems, in my humble opinion, have a sort of music and rhythm to them. Music and rhythm are not exclusive to metrical poems. Meter is just one way of achieving the pulse and the lilt. One may observe that a given poem is not "metrical" without suggesting that the poem lacks music, pulse, or lilt.

Whether John's poem is "metrical" or not doesn't really affect the verdict on how good or bad the poem is, but by posting it in a "metrical" forum he was saying that he considers the poem to be metrical and was inviting comments about whether or not the meter conformed to metrical rules and standards. (I agree with you that the poem sounds right and that there are no "bumps" that can be ascribed to a lapse in meter. My post is simply to take issue with a definition of "meter" that equates it with any kind of rhythm at all).

[Yves S L]

Mark,

You are not disagreeing with me, but are simply making your own definitions and points about metrics, while possibly emotively defending a friend. What I said was fine. You can get away with approximating rhyme and meter with a shorter line, because you will stay hovering around 3 and 4 beats if you are vaguely more rhythmic than prose rhythms, or 2 and 3 beats if the line is especially short; but around about the length of line that typically contains 5 beats it gets harder to sound more coherent (probably a function of short-term working memory), if you have already set up an expectation of some manner of regularity (by, say, posting it on Eratosphere' metrical boards).

However, I have an awful time detecting sapphics (they just collapse into prose rhythms for me at first sight), so there might be a regular rule set being applied that I cannot naturally feel; but generally, I feel any kind of rhythm just fine, whether or not I consider it regular.

I don't think it would be at all useful to merge the met and non-met boards, because it is difficult already to get specific feedback, without making it more ambiguous what kind of feedback you are looking for. There is not really a grey area, because we have centuries of examples of practice: rhythmic is not necessarily metrical, and some metrical poems have boring rhythms, because rhythms are more what you do on top of your rhythmic grid, pattern of pulses (that is the definition from music anyways).

[John Riley]

Hey, I just checked in and saw this. I’ll have to come back later.

I do want to take time to say if you’re being “emotive” to a friend stop! Everyone here knows, I hope, that I can take criticism.

Of course, no one is doing that. But on the off-chance I thought it should be mentioned. Beat away!

[Mark McDonnell]

I pretty much hear four beats per line, apart from the first line which could easily be fixed by dropping a couple of words:

This is for when you hear the chains rattling

There are probably other lines that could similarly be changed and "tidied up".

But, and this is the point, I don't necessarily think that line needs to be "fixed". There are poems that I think would benefit from that sort of tinkering but I'm not sure this is one of them. The poem is doing its own thing and doing it well. Certainly, change things in the poem to improve sense or effect but not to make it conform to more acceptable metric rules. If, as Roger concedes, it doesn't cause any feeling of wrongness or bumpiness for the reader, then why change it? If this means it's on the wrong board then so be it. I respectfully disagree. I was being quite emotive, Yves, and John is a friend. But I hope I would have said the same if this were a first poem by a new member. The last time I critted John I rewrote his entire poem and added punctuation. I disagreed with you because I felt no incoherence in the rhythm or rhyme when I read it. The rhyme is completely structured, with one glaring exception which seemed so glaring that it could only be deliberate, so that it would feel silly to suggest, for example "hey, maybe hours could rhyme with glowers".

Anyway. Peace all.

Hi Mary!

[Mark McDonnell]

I do want to take time to say if you’re being “emotive” to a friend stop! Everyone here knows, I hope, that I can take criticism.

Hi John,

I know you can. I suppose it depends whether you want that criticism to be along the lines of making the poem more metrically regular. As I've made clear, I don't think it necessarily needs that. Others might disagree, as might you, and I could be persuaded. Like I said, I mainly hear 4 beats per line. Here's a quick example of how you might regularise (is that a word?) Your version first.

Living Will

This is for when you first hear the clink of chains rattling,
or the release and squeeze of wild wind collapsing,
or the words you speak become fast hours,
or the night says to stop, stand tall, and flare,

or a crow turns, flies toward two ravens,
or you are left empty of what was creation,
or you take what you need from the wrong book,
or you are seized by the nose, a fish on a hook.

Living Will

This is for when you hear the chains rattling,
or the squeeze and release of wild wind collapsing,
or the words you speak become fast hours,
or the night says to stop, stand tall, and flare,

or one crow flies toward two ravens,
or you are left empty of what was creation,
or you take what you need from the wrong book,
or are seized by the nose, a fish on a hook.

I shortened L1

Swapped the verbs in L2 to avoid the dreaded 3 consecutive untressed syllables opening the line.

Swapped "a" for "one" on L5 and cut "turns". I think it makes a clearer metrical start and it's quite nice to contrast "one" with "two".

Cut the "you" on the last line. 3 untressed syllables opening the line again.

To me this makes a perfectly metrical poem whose place on the board nobody could quibble with. And if that's all it takes, I don't understand the objection. Yves says it is only "approximating" metre, Mary thinks it isn't metrical, and Roger equivocates with "Whether John's poem is "metrical" or not...". But surely we've had poems on this board that have been through many more nits and fixes than this.

Maybe it's me. Seriously, maybe it is!

I don't know if my version, or some similar" fix", is any better, is my point. I don't know if it needs to be done.

Hopefully I might come back with thoughts about the actual poem. I do like it

[Carl Copeland]

If I had read this poem in Non-Met, I might have praised it for musicality. Here in Met, I try grooving to the beat and am frustrated at every turn. That doesn’t mean it’s in the wrong place, though. It’s in a gray zone, as Mark says—a place I like on the Non-Met side, not so much in Met. How’s that for double standards!

Reading the poem metrically, I get 3 lines with four beats, 2 with five, 2 with either four or five, and 1 with six. I get 13 anapests, 10 iambs, 5 trochees, 3 forbidden quartus paeons (3 unstressed syllables followed by one stressed), 1 double iamb and 1 spondee. (Of course, Mary’s “spondee-ishness” is much more prominent than this would indicate.) Count it yourself. I guarantee that you’ll get different numbers. None of this, of course, says much about whether the poem reads well or not, just that it’s frustrating for chanters and “meterbators” like me.

With Mark’s regularization, I can get tetrameter with an almost equal number of iambs and anapests and a few substitutions. That requires demoting “chains,” “wind” and “fast” in lines 1-3—hardest to do with “chains,” I think—and stressing “you” in L6, but it can be done. (Note that “you” in L8 could be preserved with “you’re.”) Mark’s version is easier to groove to, but how much of an improvement is it in the poem qua poem? Like him, I don’t know.