The Ode Less Travelled Part 7

I could give you some examples of Anglo-Saxon verse, but they involve special letters (yoghs, eths and and thorns thorns) and the language is distant enough from our own to be virtually incomprehensible to all but the initiated.

Medieval verse is not so tricky to decipher. Round about the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries English poets began to write once more in the Anglo-Saxon style: this flowering, known as the Alliterative Revival, gave rise to some magnificent works. Here is the opening to William Langland's 'Piers Plowman'.32 In a som somer sesoun, whan softe softe was the was the sonne sonneI shope shope me into me into shroudes shroudes, as I a shep shep were were,In hab habite as an her heremite, unholy of of werkes werkes,Wente forth in the forth in the world wond world wondres to here here,And saw saw many many selles selles and and sell sellcouthe thynges thynges.

You hardly need to know what every word means, but a rough translation would be: One summer, when the sun was gentleI dressed myself in rough clothes like a shepherdIn the habit of a lazy hermit33Went forth into the world to hear wondersAnd saw many marvels and strange things.

You will notice that Langland does open with bang, bang, bangbang. Perhaps it is his way of beginning his poem with special hoopla. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an anonymous work from the same period (late fourteenth century: contemporary with Chaucer) opens thus: Sithen the Sithen the sege sege and the as and the a.s.saut watz watz ses sesed at Troye TroyeThe borgh britt borgh brittened and and brent brent to to brond brondez and ask askezThe tulk tulk that the that the trammes trammes of of tre tresoun ther wroght wroght.w.a.tz tried tried for his for his tricherie tricherie, the trewest trewest on on erthe erthe; My spellcheck has just resigned, but no matter. Here is a basic translation: Since the siege and the a.s.sault ceased at TroyThe town destroyed and burned to brands and ashesThe man that the wiles of treason there wroughtWas tried for his treachery, the veriest on earth; The Gawain Poet (as he is known in the s.e.xy world of medieval studieshe is considered by some to be the author of three other alliterative worksPearl, Patience and and Purity Purity) occasionally breaks the 'rule' and includes an extra alliterating word, and therefore, one must a.s.sume, an extra beat, as he does here in the second line.

Modern poets (by which I mean any from the last hundred years) have tried their hands at this kind of verse with varying degrees of accomplishment. This is a perfect Langlandian four-stress alliterated line in two hemistichs and comes from R. S. Thomas's 'The Welsh Hill Country': On a bleak background of bald stone.

Ezra Pound's 'The Sea Farer: from the Anglo-Saxon' contains lines like 'Waneth the watch, but the world holdeth' and 'Nor winsomeness to wife, nor world's delight' but for the most part it does not follow the hemistich b-b-b-c pattern with such exactness. Among the more successful in this manner was that great prosodic experimenter, W.H. Auden. These extracts are from his verse drama The Age of Anxiety The Age of Anxiety.

Deep in my dark the dream s.h.i.+nesYes, of you, you dear always;My cause to cry, cold but myStory still, still my music.Mild rose the moon, moving through ourNaked nights: tonight it rains;Black umbrellas blossom out;Gone the gold, my golden ball.

What Auden manages, which other workers in this field often do not, is to imbue the verse with a sense of the modern and the living. He uses enjambment (something very rarely done by Old English and medieval poets) to help create a sense of flow. A grim failing when writing in alliterative four-stress lines is to overdo the Saxon and produce verse that is the poetic equivalent of morris dancing or Hobbit-speak.34 When reading such verse out loud you feel the urge to put a finger to your ear and chant nasally like a bad folk singer. This unpleasantness can be aggravated by an over-reliance on a trope known as a When reading such verse out loud you feel the urge to put a finger to your ear and chant nasally like a bad folk singer. This unpleasantness can be aggravated by an over-reliance on a trope known as a kenning kenning. Kennings are found in great profusion in Anglo-Saxon, Old German and especially Norse poetry. They are a kind of compound metonym metonym (a metaphoric trope, see the glossary) used to represent a single object, person or concept: thus a s.h.i.+p becomes an (a metaphoric trope, see the glossary) used to represent a single object, person or concept: thus a s.h.i.+p becomes an oar steed oar steed, the sea is the whale road whale road or the or the gannet's bath gannet's bath ( (hron-rade or or ganotes-bae? ganotes-bae?,) and din of spears din of spears would stand for 'battle'. My favourite is would stand for 'battle'. My favourite is brow-stars brow-stars for eyes. Eddic and Icelandic bards were very fond of these devices: I suppose modern equivalents would be for eyes. Eddic and Icelandic bards were very fond of these devices: I suppose modern equivalents would be iron horse iron horse for train, for train, chalk face chalk face for the cla.s.sroom, for the cla.s.sroom, fleapit fleapit for cinema, for cinema, bunfight bunfight for party, for party, devil's dandruff devil's dandruff for cocaine and for cocaine and Hershey highway Hershey highway for...well, ask your mother. for...well, ask your mother.

Modern prosodists and teachers (perhaps in a tragic and doomed attempt to get young people interested) have described alliterative-accentual verse of this kind as a sort of Old English forerunner of hip-hop. There is no doubt that hip-hop will often favour the four-beat line, as the Blazin' Squad remind us...

Me and the boys boys, we'll be blazin' blazin' it it up up And certainly MC Hammer's 'Let's Get It Started' can be said to be formed in perfect hemistichs, two beats to each.

n.o.body knows n.o.body knows how a how a rapper rapper really really feels feelsA mind mind full of full of rhymes rhymes, and a tongue tongue of of steel steelJust put put on the on the Hammer Hammer, and you you will be will be rewarded rewardedMy beat beat is ever is ever boomin boomin, and you know know I get it I get it started started To scan such lyrics in the cla.s.sical manner would clearly be even more absurd than comparing them to Anglo-Saxon hemistichs, but somewhere between sociology, anthropology, prosody and neuro-linguistics there could be found an answer as to why a four-beat line divided in two has continued to have such resonance for well over a millennium. For our purposes, it can do no harm to be familiar with the feel of the Anglo-Saxon split line. To that end, we come to...

Poetry Exercise 7 Write a piece of verse following the rules above: each half-line to contain two beats, all four following the bang, bang, bangcrash rule (in other words alliteration on the first three beats).

To make it easier, I would suggest finding something very specific to write about. Poetry comes much more easily when concrete thoughts and images are brought to mind. For the sake of this exercise, since it is getting on for lunchtime and I am hungry, I suggest eighteen or twenty lines on the subject of what you would like, and wouldn't like, to eat right this minute.

Once again, I have scribbled down some drivel to show you that quality is not the point here, just the flexing of your new accentual-alliterative muscles. I have not been able to resist rhyming the last two lines, something entirely unnecessary and, frankly, unacceptable. You will do much better, I know.

Figs are too fussy and fish too dullI'm quite fond of quince, but I question its point.Most sus.h.i.+ is salty and somehow too rawI can't abide bagels and beans make me fartThere's something so sad about salmon and dillAnd goose eggs and gherkins are ghastlier still.But cheese smeared with chutney is cheerful enoughSo I'll settle for sandwiches, sliced very thick The brownest of bread, b.u.t.tered with love. The brownest of bread, b.u.t.tered with love.A plate of ploughman's will pleasure me well,I'll lunch like a lord, then labour till fourWhen teacakes and toast will tempt me once more.

Sprung Rhythm Stress is the life of it.GMHletter to Robert Bridges One single name rises above all others when considering the influence of Anglo-Saxon modalities on modern poetry. Wellthree single names, come to think of it...

GERARD M MANLEY H HOPKINS.

It is possible that you came across this mysterious Jesuit priest's verse at school and that someone had the dreadful task of trying to explain to you how sprung rhythm sprung rhythm worked. Relax: it is like Palmerston and the Schleswig-Holstein Question. Only three people in the world understand it, one is dead, the other has gone mad and the third is me, and I have forgotten. worked. Relax: it is like Palmerston and the Schleswig-Holstein Question. Only three people in the world understand it, one is dead, the other has gone mad and the third is me, and I have forgotten.

Hopkins was a nineteenth-century EnglishWelsh poet who developed his own metrics. Calling the system 'sprung rhythm', he marked his verse with accents, loops and foot divisions to demonstrate how his stresses should fall. Among his prosodic inventions were such devices as 'outriders', 'roving over' and 'hanging stress': these have their counterparts or at least rough equivalents in the sain sain and and lusg lusg that make up that make up cynghanedd cynghanedd, the sound system of ancient Welsh poetry, which Hopkins had studied deeply. I am not going to go into them here for two simple reasons: firstly, they make my head ache and secondly, I think they would only be usefully covered in a much more detailed book than this aspires to be. If you really want to get to grips with what he was up to, I recommend a library. H is collected letters are available in academic bookshops and university collections; in these he explains to fellow poets like Robert Bridges and Coventry Patmore what he felt he was doing. Personally I find reading his poems a supreme pleasure unless unless I am trying to figure out their underlying metrical schemes. I am trying to figure out their underlying metrical schemes.

Here is one of his best-known works 'Pied Beauty'. YOU ARE STILL READING OUT LOUD AREN' T YOU? GOOD.

GLORY be to G.o.d for dappled things be to G.o.d for dappled things For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings; Landscape plotted and piecedfold, fallow, and plough; And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

'The achieve of, the mastery of the thing!' as he himself wrote of the windhover. I am sure you have seen that most of the words are Anglo-Saxon in origin, very few Latinate words there at all (counter, original, colour and and trout trout are the only ones I am sure of ), the alliteration is fierce throughout, though not in the strict bang, bang, bangcras.h.!.+ form we saw in Langland. You probably don't need to count syllables to be able to tell that there is no standard metric regularity here. His own accents on 'all trades' reveal the importance he places on stress and the unusual nature of its disposition. are the only ones I am sure of ), the alliteration is fierce throughout, though not in the strict bang, bang, bangcras.h.!.+ form we saw in Langland. You probably don't need to count syllables to be able to tell that there is no standard metric regularity here. His own accents on 'all trades' reveal the importance he places on stress and the unusual nature of its disposition.

Now read out the opening of 'That Nature Is a Herac.l.i.tean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection'. The endearing t.i.tle refers to the Greek philosopher Herac.l.i.tus, who believed that impermanence, the perpetual flux of all nature, is central to our understanding of existence and that clouds, air, earth and fire constantly trans.m.u.te one into the other. The language again is almost entirely Anglo-Saxon in derivation. Hopkins uses virgules to mark the long lines for us into hemistichs.

CLOUD PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-Built thoroughfare: heaven roisterers, in gay-gangs they throng; they glitter in marches,Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, wherever an elm arches,s.h.i.+velights and shadowtackle in long lashes lace, lance, and pair.

Essentially his technique was all about compression compression: sprung rhythm squeezes out weak or 'slack' syllables and condenses the strong stresses, one to each foot. 'Sprung rhythm makes verse stressy,' he wrote to his brother Everard, 'it purges it to an emphasis as much brighter, livelier, more l.u.s.trous than the regular but commonplace emphasis of common rhythm, as poetry in general is brighter than common speech.'

Writing to Bridges of his poem 'The Eurydice' he said this: 'you must not slovenly read it with the eyes but with your ears as if the paper were declaiming it at you. For instance the line "she had come from a cruise training seamen" read without stress is mere Lloyds s.h.i.+pping Intelligence; properly read it is quite a different story. Stress is the life of it Stress is the life of it.' My italics, my stress stress.

The manner was designed to create an outward, poetic form ('instress') that mirrored what he saw as the 'inscape' of the world. He said in a letter to Patmore that stress is 'the making of a thing more, or making it markedly, what it already is; it is the bringing out its nature'. His sense of instress and inscape is not unlike the medieval idea of haecceity or 'thisness'35and the later, modernist obsession with quiddity ('whatness'). If such exquisite words are leaving you all of a doo-dah, it is worth remembering that for those of us with a high doctrine of poetry, the art is precisely concerned with precision, exactly about the exact, fundamentally found in the fundamental, concretely concrete, radically rooted in the thisness and whatness of everything. Poets, like painters, look hard for the exact nature of things and feelings, what they really, really are. Just as painters in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century tried to move their form on, tried to find new ways to represent the 'concrete flux of interpenetrating intensities' that T. E. Hulme saw as reality, so Hopkins attempted to create a prosodic scheme that went beyond the calm, regular certainties of iambs and anapaests ('running rhythm' as he called traditional metrics) in order to find a system that mirrored the (for him) overwhelming complexity, density and richness of nature. How they mocked Cezanne and Matisse for their pretension and oddity, yet how truthful to us their representations of nature now seem. The idiosyncrasy of Hopkins is likewise apparent, yet who can argue with such a concrete realisation of the skies? 'Cloud puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows...' The density and relentless energy of his stresses and word-yokings are his way of relaying to us the density and relentless energy of experience. There is nothing 'primitivist', 'folksy' or 'naive' in Hopkins's appropriation of indigenous, pre-Renaissance poetics, his verse strikes our ear as powerfully modern, complex and tense. 'No doubt my poetry errs on the side of oddness,' he wrote to Bridges in 1879. 'It is the vice of distinctiveness to become queer. This vice I cannot have escaped.'

One more excerpt, this time from 'The Caged Skylark', which, as you will see, refers to us us more than to the bird: more than to the bird: As a dare dare-gale sky skylark scant scanted in a dull cage cageMan's mounting spirit in his mounting spirit in his bone bone-house, mean mean house, house, dwells dwells.

How different from Blake's Robin Red breast in its its cage... cage...

Five of those twenty-four syllables are slack and squeezed into the lightest of scudding trips (in order: a, -ed, a, -it, his a, -ed, a, -it, his), while the in in of both lines takes fractionally more push. The others, with varying degrees of weight that you might like to decide upon, are stressed: I have emboldened the words that seem to me to take the primary stress, but I could well be wrong. Incidentally, 'bone-house' to mean 'body' is an example of a kenning: it doesn't take too much to see that the adjectival 'dare-gale' could easily cross over into another kenning too. of both lines takes fractionally more push. The others, with varying degrees of weight that you might like to decide upon, are stressed: I have emboldened the words that seem to me to take the primary stress, but I could well be wrong. Incidentally, 'bone-house' to mean 'body' is an example of a kenning: it doesn't take too much to see that the adjectival 'dare-gale' could easily cross over into another kenning too.

All of which demonstrates, I hope, the way in which Hopkins backwards-leapfrogged the Romantics, the Augustans (Pope, Dryden et al.), Shakespeare, Milton and even Chaucer, to forge a distinct poetics of stress metre stress metre from the ancient verse of the Welsh, Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon traditions. In turn, many British twentieth-century poets looked back the shorter distance to Hopkins, over the shoulders of Eliot, Pound and Yeats. I find it hard to read much of Ted Hughes, for example, without hearing Hopkins's distinct music. Here are two fragments from 'The s.l.u.ttiest Sheep in England' for you to recite to yourself. from the ancient verse of the Welsh, Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon traditions. In turn, many British twentieth-century poets looked back the shorter distance to Hopkins, over the shoulders of Eliot, Pound and Yeats. I find it hard to read much of Ted Hughes, for example, without hearing Hopkins's distinct music. Here are two fragments from 'The s.l.u.ttiest Sheep in England' for you to recite to yourself.

They clatterOver worthless moraines, tossingTheir Ancient Briton draggle-ta.s.sel sheepskinsOr pose, in the rain-smoke, like warriors...This lightning-broken huddle of summitsThis G.o.d-of-what-n.o.body-wants Or this, from 'Eagle': The huddle-shawled lightning-faced warriorStamps his s.h.a.ggy-trousered danceOn an altar of blood.

Certainly the sensibility is different: Hopkins is all wonderment, wors.h.i.+p, dazzle and delight, where Hughes is often (but certainly not always) in a big mood: filled with disgust, doubt and granite contempt. Nonetheless, the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, the generally four-stressed split line and use of alliteration and other 'echoic' devices (we'll come to them in a later chapter) reveal much common ground. Many modern British poets show the influence of ancient forms filtered through Hopkins. We've already met this perfect Langlandian line from R. S. Thomas's 'The Welsh Hill Country':

On a bleak background of bald stone.

From the same poem comes this: the leaves'Intricate filigree falls, and who shall renewIts brisk pattern?

We feel a faint echo of Hopkins there, I think, for all that it is more controlled and syntactically conventional. I am not denying the individuality of Hughes or Thomas: the point is that Hopkins cleared a pathway that had long been overgrown, a pathway that in the twentieth century became something of a well-trodden thoroughfare, almost a thronging concourse. Hopkins himself said in a letter to Bridges in 1888 after he had just completed the 'Herac.l.i.tean Fire' sonnet, inspired as it was by the distillation 'of a great deal of early philosophical thought': ...the liquor of the distillation did not taste very Greek, did it? The effect of studying masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise. So it must be on every original artist to some degree, on me to a marked degree.

I have taken a little time over the style, purpose and influence of Hopkins because his oppo, as you might say, Walt Whitmanvery different man, but so alike toowas busy in America tearing up the prosodic manuals round about the time Hopkins was experimenting with his sprung rhythms.

Whitman is considered by many to be the father of English language free verse free verse36: verse without traditional patterning, stanza form, rhyme, metre, syllabic count or regular accentuation. Since such verse is beyond the reach and aim of this book, much of the pleasures of Eliot, Pound, Lawrence, William Carlos Williams, the American 'Open Field' School and Whitman37himself (and very real pleasures they are) will not be looked at here. As I have already said, I do not look down on free verse at all: I admire the poet who can master it.

There are two kingdoms of life: Flora and Fauna. In the natural history of poetry there are likewise two kingdoms: there is the kingdom of Accentual-Syllabic Verse and there is the kingdom of Accentual Verse.

Hang on a mo...

There are actually three three kingdoms in the natural worldwe have forgotten the kingdom of kingdoms in the natural worldwe have forgotten the kingdom of Fungi. Fungi. And likewise there is a third kingdom of Poetry: the Kingdom of And likewise there is a third kingdom of Poetry: the Kingdom of Syllabic Syllabic verse. verse.

VI.

Syllabic Verse These three then: A accentual-syllabic verse accentual-syllabic verse-the number of syllables and stresses in a line is fixed.

B accentual verse accentual verse-the number of stresses in a line is fixed, but the number of syllables varies (includes alliterative-accentual alliterative-accentual verse). verse).

C syllabic verse syllabic verse-the number of syllables in a line is fixed, but the number of stresses varies.

A Meters and feet-iambs, pentameters, trochees, tetrameters and so on.

B Anglo-Saxon four-stress verse-Hopkins and much song, ballad, folk, hip-hop and nursery rhyme forms.

C ??

We have spent a fair amount of time looking at categories A and B but C remains unexplored.

Can there really be a form of verse where all that counts is the number of syllables in a line? No patterning of stress at all at all? What is the point point?

Well, that is a fair and intelligent question and I congratulate myself for asking it. Much syllabic verse is from other linguistic cultures than our own. Perhaps the best known is the j.a.panese haiku haiku which, as you may already know, is a three-line verse of five, seven and five syllables. In j.a.panese this syllable count is imperative and the form contains other rules which we can examine (as well as seeing whether it is feasible to write haikus in the strict j.a.panese manner in English) in the chapter on Verse Forms. The Tagalog which, as you may already know, is a three-line verse of five, seven and five syllables. In j.a.panese this syllable count is imperative and the form contains other rules which we can examine (as well as seeing whether it is feasible to write haikus in the strict j.a.panese manner in English) in the chapter on Verse Forms. The Tagalog tanaga tanaga is another such syllabic measured verse-form. j.a.panese and Tagalog is another such syllabic measured verse-form. j.a.panese and Tagalog38 are syllable-timed languages are syllable-timed languages39as are Spanish and many others European and worldwide. English, however, is stress stress-timed. What this means is beyond the scope of this book (or my poor grasp of phono-linguistics) but the upshot is that while verse ordered by syllabic count is popular in many other cultures, and indeed is often the norm, it is a rarity in English, since the lack of equal s.p.a.cing between syllables in our stress-timed utterance renders such elaborate schemes very different from the foreign mode. They will never carry the music music that native speakers of syllable-timed languages find in their syllabic verse, the English type involves a mostly visual engagement with the reader, sometimes resulting in a kind of that native speakers of syllable-timed languages find in their syllabic verse, the English type involves a mostly visual engagement with the reader, sometimes resulting in a kind of concrete concrete or or shaped shaped poetry. The moment a poet writing in this manner tries to arrange the stress poetry. The moment a poet writing in this manner tries to arrange the stressvoila!we arrive back where we started at accentual-syllabic verse and our good friend the metric foot.

Nonetheless English-language poets have tried to write syllabic verse. The history of it may be stated briefly: with the exception of a few Elizabethan examples the mode did not come into prominence until Hopkins's friend Robert Bridges wrote extensively on the subject and in the mannerincluding his unreadable 'The Testament of Beauty', five thousand lines of twelve-syllable tedium.40His daughter Elizabeth Daryush (18871977) took up the standard and wrote many syllabic poems, usually in lines of equal syllabic count, managing artfully to avoid iambic or any other regular stress patterns, as in the decasyllabic 'Still Life', a poem published in 1936: Through the open French window the warm sun lights up the polished breakfast table, laid lights up the polished breakfast table, laidround a bowl of crimson roses, for onea service of Worcester porcelain, arrayednear it a melon, peaches, figs, small hotrolls in a napkin, fairy rack of toast,b.u.t.ter in ice, high silver coffee-pot,and, heaped, on a salver, the morning's post.

Note that 'porcelain' in true upper-cla.s.s British would have to be p.r.o.nounced 'porslin' to make the count work. Some kind of form is offered by the rhymingone feels otherwise that the heavily run-on lines would be in danger of dissolving the work into prose. It was Daryush's exact contemporary the American poet Marianne Moore (18871969) who fully developed the manner. Her style of scrupulous, visually arresting syllabic verse has been highly influential. Here is an extract from her poem 'The Fish' with its syllable count of 1,3,9,6,8 per stanza.

As you can see, the count is important enough to sever words in something much fiercer than a usual enjambment. The apparent randomness is held in check by delicate rhyming: this/edifice this/edifice, and/stand and/stand.

'I repudiate syllabic verse' Moore herself sniffed to her editor and went further in interview: I do not know what syllabic verse is, can find no appropriate application for it. To be more precise, to raise to the status of science a mere counting of syllables seems to me frivolous.

As Dr Peter Wilson of London Metropolitan University has pointed out, '...since it is clear that many of her finest poems could not have been written in the form they were without the counting of syllables, this comment is somewhat disingenuous.' Other poets who have used syllabics include Dylan Thomas, Thom Gunn and Donald Justice, this from the latter's 'The Tourist from Syracuse': You would not recognize me.Mine is the face which blooms inThe dank mirrors of washroomsAs you grope for the light switch.

Between the Daryush and the Moore I hope you can see that there are possibilities in this verse mode. There is form, there is shape. If you like the looser, almost prose-poem approach, then writing in syllabics allows you the best of both worlds: structure to help organise thoughts and feelings into verse, and freedom from what some poets regard as the jackboot march of metrical feet. The beauty of such structures is that they are self-imposed, they are not handed down by our poetic forebears. That is their beauty but also their terror. When writing syllabics you are on your own.

It must must be time for another exercise. be time for another exercise.

Poetry Exercise 8 Two stanzas of alternating seven-and five-line syllabic verse: subject Rain Rain.

Two stanzas of verse running 3, 6, 1, 4, 8, 4, 1, 6, 3: subject Hygiene Hygiene.

Here are my attempts, vague rhymes in the first, some in the second: you don't have to: Rainthey say there's a taste before it comes; a tin tang it comes; a tin tanglike tonguing a batteryor a cola canI know that I can't smell itbut the animalsglumly lowering their headscan foretell its fall:they can remember rains pastas I come closertheir eyewhites flash in fear ofanother NoahHygieneI'm filthOn the outside I stink.But,There are peopleSo cleansed of dirt it makes you thinkUnhygienicThoughtsOf them. I'd much ratherStay filthy.Their latherCan't reach where they reek,SudsCan't soap inside.All hosed, scrubbed and oilily sleekThey're still deep dyedTheyCan stand all day and drenchThey still stench.

We have come to the end of our chapter on metrical modes. It is by no means complete. If you were (heaven forbid) to go no further with my book, I believe you would already be a much stronger and more confident poet for having read thus far. But please don't leave yet, there is much to discover in the next chapters on rhyming and on verse forms: that is where the fun really begins. Firstly, a final little exercise awaits.

Poetry Exercise 9 Coleridge wrote the following verse in 1806 to teach his son Derwent the most commonly used metrical feet. Note that he uses the cla.s.sical 'long' 'short' appellation where we would now say 'stressed' 'weak'. For your final exercise in this chapter, WHIP OUT YOUR PENCIL WHIP OUT YOUR PENCIL and see how in the first stanza he has suited the metre to the description by scanning each line. By all means refer to the 'Table of Metric Feet' below. You are not expected to have learned anything off by heart. I have included the second stanza, which does not contain variations of metre, simply because it is so touching in its fatherly affection. and see how in the first stanza he has suited the metre to the description by scanning each line. By all means refer to the 'Table of Metric Feet' below. You are not expected to have learned anything off by heart. I have included the second stanza, which does not contain variations of metre, simply because it is so touching in its fatherly affection.

Lesson for a Boy Trochee trips from long to short; From long to long in solemn sort Slow Spondee stalks, strong foot!, yet ill able Ever to come up with Dactyl's trisyllable.

Iambics march from short to long; With a leap and a bound the swift Anapaests throng; One syllable long, with one short at each side, Amphibrachys hastes with a stately stride; First and last being long, middle short, Amphimacer Strikes his thundering hoofs like a proud high-bred Racer.

If Derwent be innocent, steady, and wise, And delight in the things of earth, water, and skies; Tender warmth at his heart, with these metres to show it, With sound sense in his brains, may make Derwent a poet, May crown him with fame, and must win him the love Of his father on earth and his Father above.

My dear, dear child!

Could you stand upon Skiddaw, you would not from its whole ridge See a man who so loves you as your fond S.T. Coleridge...

Table of Metric Feet BINARY.

TERNARY.

QUATERNARY.

QUATERNARY continued continued

Now about the metrics: the terminology you useof amphibrachs, pyrrhics etc.is obsolete in English. We now speak of these feet only in a.n.a.lyzing choruses from Greek playsbecause Greek verse is quant.i.tative [...] we have simplified our metrics to five kinds of feet [...] trochee, iambus, anapest, dactyl, spondee. We do not need any more.

Edmund Wilson in a letter to Vladimir Nabokov, 1 September 1942

CHAPTER TWO.

Rhyme.

It is the one chord we have added to the Greek lyre.

OSCAR W WILDE: 'The Critic as Artist' 'The Critic as Artist'

I.

Rhyme, a few general thoughts

'Do you rhyme?'

This is often the first question a poet is asked. Despite the absence of rhyme in Greece and Rome (hence Wilde's aphorism above), despite the glories of Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson and all the blank-verse masterpieces of English literature from the Dark Ages to the present day, despite a hundred years of Modernism, rhyming remains for many an almost defining feature of poetry. It ain't worth a dime if it don't got that rhyme is how some poets and poetry lovers would sum it up. For others rhyming is formulaic, commonplace and conventional: a feeble badge of predictability, symmetry and bourgeois obedience.

There are very few poets I can call to mind who only only used rhyme in their work, but I cannot think of a single one, no matter how free form and experimental, who used rhyme in their work, but I cannot think of a single one, no matter how free form and experimental, who never never rhymed. Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis, William Carlos Williams, T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, e e c.u.mmings, Crane, Corso, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Hughesnot an exception do I know. rhymed. Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis, William Carlos Williams, T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, e e c.u.mmings, Crane, Corso, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Hughesnot an exception do I know.

There are some stanzaic forms, as we shall find in the next chapter, which seem limp and unfinished without the comfort and a.s.surance that rhyme can bring, especially ballads and other forms that derive from, or tend towards, song. In other modes the verse can seem cheapened by rhyme. It is hard to imagine a rhyming version of Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey' or Eliot's Four Quartets Four Quartets, for example. This may of course be a failure of imagination: once a thing is made and done it is hard to picture it made and done in any other way.

The question 'to rhyme or not to rhyme' is not one I can answer for you, except to say that it would almost certainly be wrong to answer it with 'always' or 'never'.