Beneath
Our Feet
I
recently took a trip to visit some friends in Portland. My hosts were most gracious and I had lots of
time to write poetry and read some books I had been meaning to get to for a
long time. One of these books was Robert
Pinsky’s ‘The Sounds of Poetry’. I
really enjoyed Pinsky’s brief guide to aspects of English prosody. It is written in a breezy, highly accessible
style; in addition the author uses the first person so you feel like you are
being taught by knowledgeable Uncle who feels passionately about the topic of
prosody. At times Pinsky is
opinionated. And at other times he can
be dismissive. But on the whole I found
the book thoroughly enjoyable.
I
was particularly struck by a section in Chapter 3, ‘Technical Terms and Vocal
Realities’ where Pinsky discusses the role and function of iambic
interpretation of English ‘vocal realities’.
Such interpretation of English has been central to English formal verse
for many centuries and remains so to this day for many English language poets.
What
I found revealing, and applicable to a syllabic approach, was Pinsky’s
discussion of alternative ways of parsing English speech. Pinsky uses Robert Frost’s poem ‘To
Earthward’ as an example. Pinsky focuses
on the line ‘Love at the lips was touch’ and parses the line in a standard way,
as iambic trimeter, with the first grouping, ‘love at’, possibly a trochee
(which I found a little odd; it seems to me ‘love at’ instantiates an iamb
fairly easily). Here is what Pinsky
writes about different ways of parsing this line:
“What
reason is there not to divide each line differently, for instance by describing
the first line,
‘Love
at the lips was touch,’
“as
two feet: one thunketta (‘Love at the’)
followed by a thunk-pa-thunk (‘lips
was touch’)? Though I have invented
somewhat silly-sounding terms, they make sense: they describe something all can
hear.
“But
still other descriptive terms for the same line – the same vocal reality –
would also make sense. For instance, I
could also describe the line
‘Love
at the lips was touch’
“as
an initial monosyllable (“Love”) followed by an anapest (“at the lips”) and an
iamb (“was touch”).”
Pinsky
offers a few other possible parsings of the line and then concludes:
“What
is wrong with these terms? Nothing – in the
sense that, though arbitrary, they do register something that is there in the
sound of the words. Each set of terms
does give a roughly accurate description of what one hears.”
(Robert
Pinsky, ‘The Sounds of Poetry’, pages 54 and 55)
Pinsky
goes on to reject these alternatives on the basis that such an approach fails
to distinguish between ‘rhythm and meter’.
Pinsky’s view is that the iambic meter is central, and that the other
types are a rhythmic reading that overlays the underlying iambic pulse.
The
syllabic approach to English poetry has a different understanding. Let me illustrate by making an analogy to
music. Let’s start with twelve even
pulses:
1
– 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11 – 12
How
will these twelve evenly spaced pulses be felt?
One way is to have three measures of 4-4 time:
1
– 2 – 3 – 4 : 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 : 1 – 2 – 3 – 4
This
will produce the kind of rhythm that is used in countless songs and
compositions.
Another
way of handling the twelve pulses is four measures of 3-4 time:
1
– 2 – 3 : 1 – 2 – 3 : 1 – 2 – 3 : 1 – 2 – 3
This
is a common dance rhythm, the basis for the minuet and waltz.
One
could have six groups of two pulses each:
1
– 2 : 1 – 2 : 1 – 2 : 1 – 2 : 1 – 2 : 1 – 2
Which
is often heard in marches.
One
could have two groups of six:
1
– 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 : 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6
This
is an alluring rhythm found in many compositions.
And
one could divide the twelve pulses into one group of five followed by a group
of seven:
1
– 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 : 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7
Composers
like Bartok and Brubeck might do something like this. It is also one of the basic structures for
Japanese poetry.
Each
of these arrangements articulates the twelve pulses differently. Underneath all of these arrangements lies the
bedrock of the twelve pulses and their steady march forward.
What
I want to suggest is that the flow of syllables resembles the flow of pulses in
music. And the metrical arrangement of
syllables into iambs, trochees, anapests, etc., is a way of arranging the syllables,
just as different meters in music are different ways of arranging and combining
the steady flow of the musical pulse.
From
a syllabic perspective the English language isn’t primarily iambic or primarily
anapestic. Just as music allows for
different meters so also the steady flow of syllables allows for different
arrangements of metrical validity. The
reason Pinsky was able to uncover numerous ways of parsing the rhythm of ‘Love
at the lips was touch’ is the same reason that the steady pulse, or beat, of
music can be arranged in different meters.
An iambic interpretation of the line is legitimate (and knowing Frost
was likely the poet’s intention). But
other rhythmic arrangements are also legitimate and equally valid.
Pinsky’s
view, and it has a lot of support from centuries of metrical verse, is that a
particular meter underlies the English language; that particular meter is the
iamb. From a syllabic perspective it is
not a particular meter that underlies the English language, rather it is the
flow of syllables. In other words,
beneath the metrical feet of English language poetry one finds syllables. And syllables are congenial, are willing, to
be shaped into various metrical arrangements; just as the pulse, or beat, of
music is congenial, willing, to be shaped into various meters, or groupings. Both the flow of syllables and the pulse of
music are fluid as to the possibilities of grouping them into metrical units.
I
enjoy visiting coffee houses and listening to people talk. Similarly, I enjoy hearing people talk on the
street, at the store where I work, and in other ordinary situations. What I hear is a flow of sound that has a
basic, but fluid, pulse. This fluid
pulse ebbs and flows, becomes slower or faster, but always seems to be there,
even as the conversation moves from one person to the other. I think it is this pulse that allows us to
distinguish particular words in an ordinary conversation. It is generally not appreciated that there
are no spaces between words in ordinary speech; rather there is a continuous
flow of sound, interrupted by breaths, emotional stressing, thought searching,
and other considerations. It is the
underlying fluid pulse which allows us to parse the flow of sound into units of
words and it is the syllable which is the carrier of the pulse.
It
is for these, and other, reasons that I tend to think of syllabics as more
fundamental, more primal, than meter. I
realize that this runs counter to centuries of English language prosody; a point
I take seriously. Yet, I don’t think a
syllabic view of English language poetry is in conflict with a metrical
view. To continue with the musical
analogy, arranging the twelve pulses into particular groupings doesn’t conflict
with music in 4-4 time, or in 3-4 time.
Similarly, regarding the syllable as the basic unit of English language
poetry allows for iambic constructions, but it also allows for other kinds of
metrical constructions as equally valid and equally a part of the English
language; a point that, I believe, Pinsky illustrates rather well. But it would be wrong to insist that 4-4 time
is the primal reality of the musical pulse, thinking of 3-4 time as somehow a
substitution. And, I think the same can
be said for poetic meters; namely, that an iambic pulse does not exclude the
possibility of other arrangements of the flow of English syllables. Looking beneath our feet at the syllabic
stream of the English language and one finds a wide range of metrical possibilities. Some, such as odd-numbered lines, have only
recently been used systematically.
Others, I suspect, remain to be discovered.
