[New-Poetry] Questions on form

[jfq at myuw.net]

I really don't think there's _that_ much apparatus to it, or at least no more so than one gets in modern music theory in a music school, or in color theory and the like when you study painting. I can't speak for everyone, but for me, thinking in terms of four levels of stress, of comparing sentence level stress as it works with intonation to word level stress, and the use of various punctuation devices to create pauses and control the stresses of the sentence is something that's become more or less second nature to me since I've started using it in my writing. which isn't to say that it's something that I do unconsciously. nor is it something i'm constantly aware of, but rather it's a tool by which i can shape my lines to the effect I want to have without having to worry over much about whether they'll turn out all right. Make them work enough and they'll be ok and won't need much polish after 
the act of composition. One can, i believe, approach writing in a way similar to the technique of sumi-e in japanese painting and be very successful. Or, one can be a mannerist and consider decisions and composition very carefully as one builds. My poetic goal is to do both at the same time, and while i feel like i still have a long way to go to get there, even the act of trying to do it has given me a method which contrasts sharply with what I tend to think that the general practice as it's taught in writing programs (the inspiration and revision process) that seems to try to split the difference between the two extreme's of approach, and I think that's fine too but i also think it tends to create a certain kind of writing.

If you'll permit me the conceit, i like my approach better because I feel its led me in more interesting and original directions than working with a more tradesman like inspiration and revision sort of process ever did. You're right though, in comparing the overall goal to developing an ear. What I'd point out as the correlary to that is that there is more than one kind of ear, and more than one way to develop it. In the end, maybe "you just go on your nerve" or at least i like to, but your nerve is different depending on how it's been cultivated.


On Wed, 2 Jan 2008, Michael Snider wrote:

> The only beef I have with linguistic prosody is that its practitioners call it 
> prosody, which confuses the hell out of the issue for people who want to make 
> poems.  Sure it's capable of decribing more, and more subtle, effects than is 
> traditional poetic prosody, but the whole point of metrical poetry is to make a 
> dance between those effects catalogued in scientific prosody (but used 
> unconsciously by all of us) and the deliberately schematic meters which poets 
> can actually use.
>
> Scientific, linguistic prosidies are wonderful for description of the 
> characteristics of a language and for analytical, even predictive work on the 
> relationships between languages or between the dialects within a language, but 
> I cannot imagine using it as a principle of composition.  How maintain all that 
> apparatus in consciousness? And, if unconscious, how is it different from 
> cultivating an ear?
>
> On Jan 2, 2008, at 6:21 PM, jfq at myuw.net wrote:
>
>> 
>> I agree that this is the traditional view of meter in classical prosody, and 
>> laid out more eloquently than i have done so, so thanks. But i don't think 
>> I'm wrong to call it shoehorning because it doesn't emerge from the rhythms 
>> of natural speech. That's pretty central to the point i'm trying to make: 
>> that the rhythm of poetry ought to emerge from the rhythm of natural speech. 
>> I recognize it as a prescriptive position, certainly, but I think a good 
>> case can be made for it on several good grounds. Not the least, but 
>> certainly not the only one either, is that a view of meter based on modern 
>> scientific prosody gives the poet a richer palette not just as regards 
>> rhythm but with all prosodic devices which rely on their timing in relation 
>> to eachother to have their effect. Allowing for greater subtlety in 
>> composition is a good thing, because it doesn't eliminate the more plodding 
>> sorts of meter if one wants to use them. Although with the options available 
>> to contemporary lyric poets i fail to see why one would want to remain 
>> shackled to received forms and meters.
>> 
>> On Wed, 2 Jan 2008, Michael Snider wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> On Jan 2, 2008, at 4:12 PM, jfq at myuw.net wrote:
>>> 
>>>> well, not wanting to overstate the case, obviously they matter. but i 
>>>> think only as a tertiary concern when compared to the relative pattern 
>>>> of weights and stresses and also the fact of various forms of silence 
>>>> and pauses that are generally unaccounted for, but hugely influential in 
>>>> the rhythm of verse. account for that, and if there are no 
>>>> irregularities there, then sure, you might turn to syllable count to 
>>>> smooth wrinkles.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> All that goes on--silences, dipthongs, rhetorical stress, and much 
>>> more--but the rhthm of a metrical poem is neither those things it inherits 
>>> from natural speech nor its meter, but is instead a product of the 
>>> interaction of meter and speech. It's not shoe-horning, though Bob G is 
>>> correct that meter results in what you miight call "nudges" either up or 
>>> down on the natural speech stress of a phrase. Those nudges come from a 
>>> more-or-less strict pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables within 
>>> the feet of the poem--and only contrasting stress within a foot, not 
>>> between feet, counts for the meter.
>>> 
>>> BTW, the terms of traditional English prosody are Greek in origin but they 
>>> don't even pretend to refer to the same phenomena, though Sidney and a few 
>>> others were a might confused early on.
>>> 
>>> And hiya, folks. Been mostly off-net for a while, and the several thousand 
>>> unread New Poetry emails were a little intimidating.  I finally decided to 
>>> just jump over the lot.
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>> 
>> 
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