PART II CHAPTER 2 - POETRY

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1 PART II CHAPTER 2 - POETRY French verse is syllabic: the metrical unit, or foot, is the syllable. An alexandrine, for instance, is a line of 12 feet, which means 12 syllables. (Lexical note: a line = un vers; verse = the poetic form as opposed to prose; a verse = un verset in the Bible, while in ordinary, non religious verse, we speak not of verses but of stanzas = strophes). English verse has to take into account the word stresses which are a characteristic of the language. If an English foot corresponded to a stressed syllable, English verse would be merely accentual, and life would be much easier, but English verse is accentual-syllabic, which means that it takes into account both the number of syllables and the alternance of stressed and unstressed syllables. A stressed or accented syllable is marked /and is also called a strong syllable or a beat. An unstressed or unaccented syllable is marked and is also called a weak or slack syllable or an off-beat. To place the stresses on the word of a poem is to scan it. The art of scanning is called scansion. The science of poetic forms at large is prosody. The most common English foot, the iamb ['aiæm]: / The basic rhythm of English poetry is iambic [ai'æmbik]: As for example in Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism: 'Tis hard to say, if grea ter want of skill Appear in wri ting or in jud ging ill; The vertical line indicates the measure and separates one foot from the next. The inverted slash or stress mark \ is a conventional way of indicating not a secondary stress but a syllable which ought to be stressed according to metrics, but not necessarily according to syntax. It would be possible to decide not to stress the word or, in which case the line would scan:? '? '??? '? ' Appear in wri ting or in jud ging ill; The foot composed of 2 unstressed syllables is called a pyrrhic: On the contrary, a foot of 2 stressed syllables is a spondee: // Listen, for instance to Byron, describing the beginning of the battle of Waterloo:? '? '? ' '?? ' But hark! that hea vy sound breaks in once more, As if the clouds its echo would repeat; And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before! ' '? '? '? '? '?? ' Arm! Arm! it is it is the cannon's o pening roar! Here the spondee creates and obvious effect, imitating the roar of the cannon, which is then echoed by 2 iambs: it is it is. It had been prepared, a few lines earlier, by the succession of 2 stressed syllables: that 'heavy 'sound 'breaks in once 'more. The grammatical necessity to stress the verb breaks inverts the iambic rhythm. The last line in the previous quotation from Byron has a slowing down rhythm, as the echo of the cannon is dying away, and this is rendered by an increasing number of unstressed syllables in between the beats. The last foot redoubles its unstressed syllable: ' '? '? '? '? '?? ' Arm! Arm! it is it is the can non's o pening roar! Such a foot, with 2 slack syllables before the beat, is called an anapaest?? ' ['æn?pi:st / 'æn?pest]. It is easy to remember because anapaest has 3 syllables and the rhythm is anapaestic [æn?'pestik]?? '? Listen to Byron again:

2 ?? '? '? '? Though the night was made for loving?? '? '? ' And the day returns too soon '? '? '? '? Yet we'll go no more a roving?? '?? ' By the light of the moon The slower pace of the anapaestic rhythm serves the sadness of the tone. And also, besides, the negation of the lovers' nocturnal pleasure is expressed by a trochaic line, 'Yet we'll 'go no 'more a 'roving which comes as a reversal of the iambic / anapaestic rhythm of the rest of the stanza. The opposite of iamb is a trochee '? (The intrusion of a trochee in an iambic rhythm is a trochaic inversion). The Trochaic equivalent of an anapaest is called a dactyl: '?? as in '?? '?? ' Hickory Dickory Dock An iambic / anapaestic rhythm is called a rising rhythm. A trochaic / dactylic rhythm is a falling rhythm.

3 There are other types of feet and the art of scanning or scansion is a little more complicated than that, but these are the basics. Here is a recapitulation: 2 syllables 3 syllables Rising iamb? ' anapaest?? ' Falling trochee '? dactyl '?? spondee ' ' pyrrhic?? Each line is measured by the numb er of feet in contains and named, from one to eight: (1) monometer (2) dimeter ['dimit? * ] (3) trimeter (4) ['trimit? * ] tetrameter (5) pentameter [pen'tæmit? * ] (6) hexameter (7) heptameter (8) octameter.. The most common lines are the tetrameter, the pentameter and the hexameter. The hexameter is also called the alexandrine [æ'ligzændrain], for it corresponds most often to a line of 12 syllables, as feet of 2 syllables are the most frequent. The metrical pattern of a line, or of a poem, is a standard, determines by both the number and the nature of feet most frequently used. For instance, the basic English metrical pattern or verse pattern is the iambic pentameter: a line composed of 5 iambs. 4 trochees make a trochaic tetrameter, 6 iambs an iambic hexameter, etc.. Again, a metrical pattern is a standard, or a norm, which enables variations. For instance, in the examples quoted above, the metrical departures from the norm underlined some relevant points in the meaning of the poems. That is fairly obvious in Byron's evocation of the cannon at the beginning of the battle of Waterloo. Sometimes, merely to notice these variations from a standard metrical pattern can be a key to an efficient commentary of a poem. See, for instance, Philip Larkin's Autobiography at an Air-Station :

4 Delay, well, travellers must expect delay? '? ' ' '? '? ' Delay? For how long? No one seems to know. With all the luggage weighed, the tickets checked, It can't be long... We amble to and fro, '? ' '? '? '? ' Sit in steel chairs, buy cigarettes and sweets? '? '? '? '?? ' And tea, unfold the pa pers. Ought we to smile,? '? ' '?? '? ' Perhaps make friends? No: in the race for seats? '? ' '??? ' ' You're best alone. Friendship is not worth while. '? '?? '? '? ' Six hours pass: if I'd gone by boat last night?? ' ' '?? '? ' I'd be there now. Well, it's too late for that.? '? '? '?? ' ' The kiosk girl is yawning. I feel staled, '? '?? '? '? ' Stupe fied, by inaction and, as light Begins to ebb outside, by fear; I set So much on this Assumption. Now it's failed. Merely to decide how to scan the poem is already an interpretation, not so much of its meaning, for this is fairly clear, but rather of its effects. Underlining the words which bear rhythmical variations is already to make a commentary on the poem. The spondee in line 2 mimics the boredom of waiting as well as the interruption in the flowing of time, with these 3 stressed syllables in a row... how long? No... In the same way, the trochaic inversion Sit in follows and underlines the interruption of the walking to and fro. It is immediately followed by the necessity of stressing steel, in the freezing spondee steel chairs. And this little detail, the foregrounding of the the steel these chairs are made of, is a key to the whole subtlety of the poem. For there is little else than this extra stress to express the total lack of comfort of the situation, as well as the disgust and perhaps even the suppressed loss of temper of the poet (whose voice thus sounds as if he were repressing a Yuk! or some more developed disparaging comment). The same secret bad-temper is then expressed and underlined by the next variations, which insist on Ought we to simile?... No... Friendship is not worth while, which has now become explicit. But therefore it is increased by another effect, a form of distanciation, creating a very British instance of tongue-in-cheek humour. These are only a few examples of how paying close attention to the form can lead to a deeper understanding of a text. Let us have a second look at the lay-out of this poem and its appearance on the page: Autobiography at an Air-Station Delay, well, travellers must except delay Delay? For how long? No one seems to know. With all the luggage weighed, the tickets checked, It can't be long... We amble to and fro, Sit in steel chairs, buy cigarettes and sweets And tea, unfold the papers. Ought we to smile, Perhaps make friends? No: in the race for seats You're best alone. Friendship is not worth while. Six hours pass: if I'd gone by boat last night I'd be there now. Well, it's too late for that.

5 The kiosk girl is yawning. I feel staled, Stupefied, by inaction and, as light Begins to ebb outside, by fear; I set So much on this Assumption. Now it's failed. Apart from the word Autobiography in the title which draws attention on the peculiar status of the poet as a narrator, and even before we start reading the words, we can see that it is divided into 2 stanzas, or rather 2 parts of unequal length = 14: this is a sonnet, conventionally composed of an octet and a sestet. In this case, the 2 parts are separated by a blank line, but that is not always the case. This articulation, the shift from the octet to the sestet is called the volta of the sonnet. It is a point where usually something happens or changes, at least, and usually, in the discourse of the poem, which often brings in a new argument or a different way of looking at things. Here, remarkably, nothing happens. An octet can be divided into 2 quatrains, a sestet into 2 tercets, or a couplet and a quatrain. Here the octet is end-stopped, for it ends with a full-stop at the end of a sentence. If it was made of only one sentence, it could be said to be self-contained. But it is not. Instead, both the octet and the sestet are made up of several sentences, some of which end and begin in the middle of lines, so that the metrics does not correspond to the syntax. This gives rise to enjambments or run-on-lines. These variations and interferences too can prove very useful for a commentary. For instance, it would be easy to show how, in this poem, run-on-lines parallel the effect of metrical variations, and for instance in Ought we to smile, / Perhaps make friends? No: in the race for seats / You're best alone. But also, in a very simple way, the enjambment buy cigarettes and sweets / And tea, by foregrounding such a stereotype of an English reflex, is enough to create another distanciating effect, which attracts the reader's attention to the nearly caricatural Englishness of the poetic voice. That kind of formal effect is poetic, in the sense of Jakobson's definition of the poetic function of language as putting the stress of the message for the message. For Jakobson, too, the poetic is a projection of the paradigmatic axis onto the syntagmatic axis. In other words, what is characteristic of a poem is its vertical dimension as a text. In the case of free verse, there is no longer a metrical pattern, there are no longer any rhymes, but what remains is this changing of lines before the right-hand side margin, which creates a rhythm and comes to add up another dimension to the ordinary organisation and punctuation of the syntax. In Larkin's sonnet, there are rhymes = rimes. Some of them are end-rhymes, but some are internal rhymes (= leonine rhymes) like No / know ; Delay/ Delay ; Stupefied / outside ; inaction / Assumption. Others, still, are initial rhymes = head rhymes = alliterations, like Sit in steel chairs, buy cigarettes and sweets. alliteration is more generally defined as the repetition of a consonant at the beginning of words. The repeating of vowel sounds alone is called assonance. Other rhymes, still, are half-rhymes or pararhymes, where only the end consonant is repeated: this is a case of simple consonance, like night / that. Others are eyerhymes, for the rhyme for the eye only, not for the ear, like now / know. There are many set forms of poetry, whether in terms of rhymes or of meter, of stanzas or of rhythms. It would be too long and fastidious to survey them all here, and they are listed very thoroughly in your Handbook of Literary Terms. What is important to remember is that verse, more that any other literary form, never forgets that it is a form. Poems often generate their effects in departing from a standard, whether it is a metrical standard or a conventional form of composition.

BOOK TABLE OF CONTENTS

BOOK TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Literary Forms POETRY Verse Epic Poetry Dramatic Poetry Lyric Poetry SPECIALIZED FORMS Dramatic Monologue EXERCISE: DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE Epigram Aphorism EXERCISE: EPIGRAM