[New-Poetry] Re: Scanned

[David Graham]

All true, but it gets complicated fast, no?  For the point at which I  
personally think "too many variations" is likely not the same point  
at which Robert Frost does, or Alexander Pope, or Richard Wilbur.   
There are moments in Frost's blank verse poems, for instance, where  
it seems that any line of oh, 9 to 13 syllables with a couple iambs  
in it, can "count."

Plus the fact that educated ears nonetheless will frequently hear  
stress differently in any given line.

I first came to these conclusions many years ago after I made a  
little post-graduate project of boning up on prosody, realizing that  
my MFA program required absolutely no attention to the subject.  So I  
read many of the accepted major texts, and soon discovered (a) a  
great deal of certainty of tone, and (b) frequent disagreement,  
expert to expert, on just about EVERYTHING.

Having said all this, I will, of course, defer to the actual experts  
among us (Sam?) on most matters.  But that won't alter my opinion  
that the degree to which many prosodists sound sure of themselves is  
often in proportion to how highly contested things are.


========================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu

Home Page:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz

Poetry Library:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
==========================================




On May 3, 2009, at 12:22 PM, TheOldMole wrote:

> Yeah, but if you start with the premise of an accentual-syllabic  
> line, can't you then chart the variations from that pattern? And at  
> a certain point (which may change from reader to reader), aren't  
> you going to say "too many variations -- this just doesn't scan"?  
> Or "too many places where the accent wants to fall on the wrong  
> syllable -- this just doesn't scan"?
>
> David Graham wrote:
>> I've never seen the experts agree on *any* specific scansion, I  
>> don't think.  Which doesn't mean it's utterly arbitrary:  if  
>> someone calls a 5 syllable foot an iamb they're just wrong.  But  
>> there is so much disagreement about allowable substitutions (how  
>> loose is too loose); what individual ears hear as stress; matters  
>> of regional accents; changes of taste over time;  etc., that  
>> scansion often *seems* purely arbitrary.  Not to mention the many  
>> competing systems of gridding-out metrics. . . .
>>
>> ========================================
>> David Graham
>> grahamd at ripon.edu <mailto:grahamd at ripon.edu>
>>
>> Home Page:
>> http://web.mac.com/drjazz
>>
>> Poetry Library:
>> http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
>> ==========================================
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On May 3, 2009, at 12:02 PM, Chris Lott wrote:
>>
>>> I'm curious about this-- can our resident experts come to  
>>> agreement on
>>>
>>> the scansion of Baer's poem? Or is the whole process really as
>>>
>>> arbitrary as it feels?
>>>
>>>
>>> c
>>>
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>> ---
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> New-Poetry mailing list
>> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>>
>
> -- 
> Tad Richards
> Read my NY Writing Careers Examiner column today!
> http://www.examiner.com/x-2862-NY-Writing-Careers-Examiner
>
> http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
> http://opusforty.blogspot.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20090503/29d05ea1/attachment.html