Meter in English: A Critical EngagementDavid Baker University of Arkansas Press, 1996 M01 1 - 368 pages In 1993, poet, author, and teacher Robert Wallace wrote an essay, "Meter in English," to clarify and simplify methods of studying the line-by-line rhythms and structure of poetry. When David Baker circulated Wallace's essay to other poets and student of prosody, the ten propositions it contained elicited an excited and powerful reaction from each respondent. Some strongly concurred; others expressed rousing disagreement. United States Poet Laureate Robert Haas called the essay "a paradigm shift" in our understanding of English prosody. David Baker has gathered Wallace's essay, fourteen essay-length responses - from poets as divergent in practice as Timothy Steele and Robert Hass, John Frederick Nims and Eavan Boland - and an extensive afterword by Wallace that brings the argument full circle. With Wallace's ten points as a common benchmark, the respondents have created an unparalleled sampling of thought on the status of meter in poetics today and the rich diversity of opinion on how poems achieve their sound and rhythm. Taken as a whole, the collection becomes a lastingly valuable teaching guide to meter as it's understood by some of its finest scholars and makers. |
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Page xvi
... present below the right little finger . Habit and ease may persuade or force some to employ this longer mark ; still , a ready problem arises for its use to mark accents , since its traditional application is to divide lines xvi DAVID ...
... present below the right little finger . Habit and ease may persuade or force some to employ this longer mark ; still , a ready problem arises for its use to mark accents , since its traditional application is to divide lines xvi DAVID ...
Page xviii
... problems of literary study to our students instead of presuming to teach them the answers only , as if " answers " are universal and com- plete . Meter is not a problem to be " solved " at all , but a set of for- mal applications to be ...
... problems of literary study to our students instead of presuming to teach them the answers only , as if " answers " are universal and com- plete . Meter is not a problem to be " solved " at all , but a set of for- mal applications to be ...
Page 11
... problem is that the strong accents of English tend to override , for all but the most classically trained readers , the pattern of vowel - lengths . As X. J. Kennedy remarks ( An Introduction to Poetry , 7th ed . , 1990 , 166 ) ...
... problem is that the strong accents of English tend to override , for all but the most classically trained readers , the pattern of vowel - lengths . As X. J. Kennedy remarks ( An Introduction to Poetry , 7th ed . , 1990 , 166 ) ...
Page 15
... problems with accentual meter in this sense . It may be plausible enough , given the metrical norm TUM TUM TUM TUM , to accept TUM TUM te TUM TUM ( " Dull roots with spring rain " ) as a rhythmic variation . But it seems exceed- ingly ...
... problems with accentual meter in this sense . It may be plausible enough , given the metrical norm TUM TUM TUM TUM , to accept TUM TUM te TUM TUM ( " Dull roots with spring rain " ) as a rhythmic variation . But it seems exceed- ingly ...
Page 16
... problem is that what we may count as a stress seems extremely subjective . Nothing in theory prevents that determination from being arbitrary . The very existence in speech of any number of levels of stress makes it impossible to tell ...
... problem is that what we may count as a stress seems extremely subjective . Nothing in theory prevents that determination from being arbitrary . The very existence in speech of any number of levels of stress makes it impossible to tell ...
Contents
3 | |
43 | |
45 | |
A Defense of the NonIambic Meters | 59 |
MeterMaking Arguments | 75 |
A Response to Robert Wallace | 97 |
Some Responses to Robert Wallace | 109 |
A New Footing | 125 |
Verse vs ProseProsody vs Meter | 249 |
Metrics and Pedagogical Economy | 265 |
Two Letters | 279 |
A Response to Robert Wallace | 283 |
PART THREE | 293 |
Completing the Circle | 295 |
Bibliography | 351 |
Contributors | 357 |
Metrical Pleasures of Our Time | 151 |
Strength in Diversity | 169 |
Meter and the Fortunes of the Numerical Imagination | 197 |
Staunch Meter Great Song | 221 |
Index of Proposal Discussions | 361 |
Index of Authors | 363 |
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Common terms and phrases
accentual meter accentual verse accentual-syllabic meter accentual-syllabic verse amphibrach anacrusis anapestic Anapests and dactyls basis for meter caesura century conventional cretic critical dactylic dactylic meters discussion double-iamb e-s ending English meter English verse essay example exist in English extra-syllable ending foot in English four-stress free verse Gioia green thought hear iamb iambic line iambic meter iambic norm iambic pentameter iambic verse Jeffers Jespersen lables language levels of stress linguistic Marianne Moore measure meter in English metrical stress metrists Moore's Nims non-iambic meters number of syllables pattern poem poem's poetic poets Professor Wallace proposition prose prosodists pyrrhic foot quantity reader regular rhyme rhythm rhythmic Robert Wallace Robinson Jeffers Saintsbury scansion seems sense sound speech stress spondee stanza stressed and unstressed strong stresses syllabic meter syllabic verse syllable count syllables tetrameter Timothy Steele tion traditional trochaic trochaic meter trochee unstressed syllables variation versification Wallace's words writing
Popular passages
Page v - The sound must seem an echo to the sense : Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows ; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar : When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow ; Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Page 190 - Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother. Death, ere thou hast slain another Fair and learn'd and good as she, Time shall throw a dart at thee.
Page 127 - Jesus me, the last delinquent, Deems the profanest. Man disavows, and Deity disowns me ; Hell might afford my miseries a shelter ; Therefore Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all Bolted against me.
Page 20 - Christabel is not, properly speaking, irregular, though it may seem so from its being founded on a new principle : namely, that of counting in each line the accents, not the syllables.
Page 158 - I employ sprung rhythm at all? because it is the nearest to the rhythm of prose, that is the native and natural rhythm of speech...
Page 175 - And for ther is so gret diversite In Englissh and in writyng of cure tonge, So prey I God that non myswrite the, Ne the mysmetre for defaute of tonge.
Page 157 - THE FISH wade through black jade. Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps adjusting the ash-heaps; opening and shutting itself like an injured fan. The barnacles which encrust the side of the wave, cannot hide there for the submerged shafts of the sun, split, like spun glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness into the crevices — in and out, illuminating the turquoise sea of bodies. The water drives a wedge of iron through the iron edge of the cliff; whereupon the stars, pink...
Page 252 - I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.