{"id":78402,"date":"1999-04-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1999-04-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/article\/prosody-atrocities\/"},"modified":"2024-03-26T14:11:18","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T18:11:18","slug":"prosody-atrocities","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/article\/prosody-atrocities\/","title":{"rendered":"Prosody atrocities"},"content":{"rendered":"

O<\/font>ne odd side effect of the growing interest in formal poetry over the last fifteen years is the continuing divergence of opinion regarding just what form is. In fact, there now seems to be as much if not more disagreement afoot (if you\u2019ll forgive the expression) than there was in the free-verse-dominated 1960s and 1970s. In this day of the iambic triumphant, we still see metrical philosophies ranging from the liberal (i.e., allowing so many substitutions in the line so as to distort the beat), to the conservative (i.e., limiting substitutions so readers never lose that iambic pulse). Paul Val\u00e9ry\u2019s 1921 remark about the then-mushrooming free verse movement\u2014\u201cOur epoch has seen the birth of almost as many prosodies as it has counted poets\u201d\u2014could at century\u2019s end apply with equal force to the formal poets of today.<\/p>\n

I am happy to report that Timothy Steele\u2014from whose new book I took the quotation from Val\u00e9ry\u2014is among the more rigorous metrical theorists around. He is also among the most rigorous metrical practitioners: in addition to Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt against Meter<\/i> (1990), he has published four volumes of poems and edited a collection of J. V. Cunningham\u2019s poems. Steele argues that poets ought to limit themselves to a judicious deployment of the three time-honored variations of the iambic pentameter line: a trochee in the first foot, a trochee in the third foot, and a feminine ending.<\/p>\n

A crash course for the metrically uninitiated: the substitution-free iambic pentameter line the fossil bears the stamp of fin or leaf<\/i>\u2014in which each of the five, two-syllable feet are made up of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one\u2014with a first-foot trochaic substitution would read: Fossils may bear the stamp of fin or leaf<\/i>. The same line with a third-foot trochee would read: The fossil\u2019s world, dying and lost, now lives<\/i>. And with a feminine ending\u2014i.e., the addition of an unstressed syllable at the end of the line\u2014 the line would read: The fossil bears the stamp of face and body<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Even limiting themselves to these three time-sanctioned substitutions, \u201cskillful poets,\u201d Steele argues, \u201ccan flexibly handle, in regular iambic verse, pretty much any and all the verbal and syntactical resources of English.\u201d Steele considers all the other possibilities\u2014an entire section, for instance, is devoted to an examination of \u201cLoose Iambic\u2014Iambic Verse with Anapestic Substitution.\u201d But generally speaking, Steele doesn\u2019t favor such innovations. One famous anapest-ridden poem Steele does like\u2014Robert Frost\u2019s \u201cNeither Out Far Nor In Deep\u201d\u2014 works because the abab<\/i> rhyme scheme lends the poem additional glue. (An anapestic foot consists of three syllables, with an accent only on the final syllable, as in the third foot of Frost\u2019s trimeter line from \u201cNeither Out Far Nor In Deep\u201d: \u201cThey turn their back on the land.\u201d) The rhymes in Frost\u2019s poem, Steele says, \u201chelp us hear the line- endings distinctly.\u201d And this is crucial, given the unusual recurrence of the anapestic foot.<\/p>\n

Another out-of-the-ordinary substitution Steele does not dislike is the first- and second-foot trochees in Louise Bogan\u2019s line from \u201cAnimal, Vegetable, and Mineral\u201d: \u201cEager quickly to free its sticky foot.\u201d One reason that this odd substitution works is because the rest of the fairly long poem consists primarily of iambic lines; another is that both trochee stresses are themselves powerful and clearly defined\u2014something that is not always the case when large-scale metrical changes are rung.<\/p>\n

O<\/font>ne of the remarkable things about iambic verse, Steele points out, is its ability to accommodate the various levels of stress in spoken English. And indeed, one of his strengths as a critic is the emphasis he puts on this often misunderstood relationship between stress and meter. As Steele eloquently observes, \u201c[i]n the mountain range of the line, one of the valleys may prove higher than one of the peaks.\u201d Serious readers and writers of iambic verse know that one of its neatest tricks is to have a syllable that is normally stressed in a line of prose or spoken English be unaccented, and to have a normally unaccented syllable be accented. In a line from a poem by Anne Finch, quoted in Steele\u2019s book\u2014\u201cOf heightened wit and of the critic\u2019s art\u201d\u2014the of<\/i> that is unaccented in the first foot is accented in the third. In a line by Edward Thomas\u2014\u201cTheir doubles and the shadow of my boat\u201d\u2014the usually light and<\/i> is stressed. The best course, writes Steele, and it is a valuable piece of advice, \u201cis to treat as an iamb any foot whose second syllable is heavier than the first.\u201d (Following the practice of the Danish philologist Otto Jespersen, Steele in one section marks lines with the numbers 1 through 4, with 1 identifying the lightest syllable and 4 the heaviest.) These mutations in stress in particular, Steele remarks, \u201cindicate how incredibly complex metrical practice is in comparison to metrical description.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Steele claims that the \u201cpossibilities for modulation in iambic pentameter are infinite,\u201d it is this maneuvering of stress that he principally has in mind. The ease with which our syllables change their metrical value\u2014despite a recalcitrant few, of course, such as -ing<\/i> and -y<\/i> (types of syllables Steele oddly enough doesn\u2019t discuss in any depth)\u2014distinguishes our language, for instance, from ancient Greek and Latin. In the \u201cqualitative measures\u201d of ancient versification, Steele notes\u2014and this is also true of modern French and Italian\u2014\u201cmetrical identities are less susceptible to manipulation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given the almost perfect match between the iambic pentameter line in particular and our accentual language, it seems wrong to disavow rules that, far from fencing in the writer, actually permit much in the way of technical solution and aesthetic discovery. But then those who write exclusively in free verse would not know this. As the Australian poet-critic James McAuley wrote in Versification: A Short Introduction<\/i> (1966)\u2014an observation that Steele includes in his notes\u2014alternate modes of versification \u201call have difficulties of their own, and all sacrifice something of the unique complexity or variability-within-strictness of the traditional norm.\u201d<\/p>\n

F<\/font>or the beginning poet especially, Steele\u2019s book is full of good practical suggestions. \u201cThe pentameter line in particular seems capable of accommodating almost any syntactical arrangement, and the serious poet will avoid relying on the more common ones.\u201d Internal rhyme (i.e., a rhyme within a single line) \u201csound[s] too jingly,\u201d at least to Steele\u2019s ear; but \u201ccommonplace rhymes are not inevitably bad.\u201d (Steele\u2019s discussion of the history of rhyme is fascinating.) A common word followed by an uncommon one, Steele avers, is a good strategy; congruent monosyllabic and multisyllabic lines also make for \u201cinteresting counterpoints.\u201d \u201cComplexity of technique,\u201d he writes, \u201cis not invariably an advantage.\u201d But perhaps Steele\u2019s most important bit of advice is his quarrel with the belief, put forward by T. S. Eliot, that \u201cmeter is most vital when violated\u201d Such a view may have been true when metrical awareness was, as Steele puts it, \u201cinternalized and intuitive,\u201d as it was in Eliot\u2019s time; but in our day, when free verse is what is internalized and intuitive, meter is most vital when not<\/i> violated.<\/p>\n

T<\/font>he only flaw in Steele\u2019s rewarding book is his reluctance to criticize the views of other contemporary studies on prosody. Steele only mentions in passing, for instance, Annie Finch\u2019s The Ghost of Meter<\/i> (1993), Alfred Corn\u2019s The Poem\u2019s Heartbeat: A Manual of Prosody<\/i> (1997), and David\u2019s Baker\u2019s essay anthology, Meter in English: A Critical Engagement<\/i> (1996).<\/a>[1]<\/a> (Let us not confuse Annie Finch, the fine young American poet, with Anne Finch, the contemporary of Pope\u2019s whose line Steele quotes.) Steele commends in passing Corn\u2019s Poem\u2019s Heartbeat<\/i>, but is Corn more permissive about meter because he has been writing free verse most of his life? I wonder. The positions of other critics need to be clarified, especially if any are passing off as formal verse what properly should be called free. In a note to chapter one, Steele does dispute two erroneous scansions by Paul Fussell in Poetic Meter and Poetic Form<\/i> (scansions involving pyrrhics and spondees), but this is very nearly it for criticism, at least when it comes to the current corps of writers. Indeed, in the very next sentence of this same note, Steele hints that a more tolerant view of pyrrhics and spondees is also found in a piece in David Baker\u2019s anthology; if so, I would certainly like to hear more about it.<\/p>\n

A pyrrhic foot consists of two unstressed syllables, and a spondee, two long ones. I agree with Steele that if the second syllable of either the pyrrhic or the spondee is the slightest bit heavier than the first, those feet should be considered iambic. And if the first syllable of either spondee or pyrrhic is the slightest bit heavier than the second, these feet should be regarded as trochees. True pyrrhics and spondees are rare, claims Steele. At one point in the book, he writes: \u201cI do not wish to seem spondicidal or pyrrhicidal,\u201d but he is. In my view, this is another feather in his metrical cap.<\/p>\n

This slight reluctance to criticize, however, is no reason not to read All the Fun\u2019s in How You Say a Thing<\/i>. It is the first book on meter I can recall reading that prompted me to shake my head in agreement on almost every page. And apart from its judicious analysis and good counsel, Steele cites as examples some of the finest poetry I have ever seen in a study of this kind; Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Browning, Auden, Stevens, Edgar Bowers, Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht, and Dana Gioia are a few of the poets whose work he draws upon. The glossary is useful, too, and does not suffer in the least from Steele\u2019s drumming home further, in different terms, points made earlier.<\/p>\n

For someone like me whose views on iambic verse have changed over the years, from the tolerant to the orthodox, it is hard to speak with much authority in these matters. Timothy Steele, however, does not appear to have changed his mind at all. Good thing, because he was right from the beginning. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Notes<\/b>
\nGo to the top of the document.<\/font><\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n
  1. <\/a> See Daniel Kunitz\u2019s perceptive review of Meter in English<\/i> in The New Criterion<\/i> (September 1997). Go back to the text.<\/a><\/font> <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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