A brief detour in Allen’s 1979 (Summer session) William Blake class as one student brings him back into the thorny issue of metrics
Student: Can you please tell me a little bit about the meter?
AG: Well, we’re going back to… Okay, sure, we can. I’d like to get a little bit more into our symbolism. You mean, for the homework thing?
Student: Um-hmm.
AG: You’ve been brooding about that all this time?
Student: Yeah, I didn’t understand it.
AG: You didn’t understand it. Okay. This is a good-enough time.
Student: This is a seven-beat line..
AG: Seven
Student: …and the other one was three.
AG: Three
Student: Three.
AG: Yeah.
Student: Yeah. He’s gone into the seven-beat line.
AG: Septenaries (Heptameter), that’s right. Not six.
Well, the Shakespeare line had been more or less of a crisp, blank verse. (John) Milton had Latinized it and made it more melodious in terms of (being) horn-trumpet blasts. Blake loosened that Miltonic line, extended it out so there could be maybe a little bit more discourse, a little bit more informal talk, or wilder talk, or crazier invention – a less limited line, less closed-in.
Basically.. I said six before, but I was wrong. It’s septenary. Seven basic nodes or beats in it. He describes his verse intentions later on for the same kind of verse when he came to write Jerusalem, I think. You might take a look at the preface to Jerusalem. See if it’s there. Page one four-four, bottom of the page.
“When this Verse was first dictated to me I consider’d a Monotonous Cadence like that used by Milton & Shakespeare & all writers of English Blank Verse, derived from the modern bondage of Rhyming; to be a necessary and indispensible part of Verse.” – (He’s pointing out that even the blank verse of Milton and Shakespeare was derived from a kind of verse that rhymed. And in his own day it had degenerated into a kind of very heavy rhyme – or. prior to him, in (Alexander) Pope and (John) Dryden, (into) rhymed couplets. Much too clipped and strict and cage-like. And in one of his early poems, he speaks of the sound being forced and the notes being few, for the music of poetry of his day. I think….
Student: “To the Muse”, is it not?
AG: “To the Muse” – it’s very early. There is some image of a cage.
Student: “Poetical Sketches”
AG: Yeah. Where is this? Find “Poetical Sketches”. [Allen searches for the text] While we’re on the subject of verse, we’ll get to his thoughts about verse for the moment, since we got into it at all. “Poetical Sketches”. Yeah, here. We’ll begin it somewhere around … “To the Muses”, is it?
Student: Yeah.
AG: It’s on page four-oh- eight. Hold your hand on page one-four-four, and get on to (page) four-oh-eight – his verse there – “To the Muses”:
“Whether on Ida’s shady brow,/Or in the chambers of the East,/The chambers of the sun, that now/From antient melody have ceas’d;/ Whether in Heav’n ye wander fair,/Or the green corners of the earth,/ Or the blue regions of the air,/ Where the melodious winds have birth;/. Whether on chrystal rocks ye rove,/ Beneath the bosom of the sea/ Wand’ring in many a coral grove,/Fair Nine, forsaking Poesy [Poetry]!/ How have you left the antient love/That bards of old enjoy’d in you!/ The languid strings do scarcely move!/ The sound is forc’d, the notes are few!”
“The sound is forc’d, the notes are few!” – I think is very often interpreted as reference to the closed-verse couplets of 18th century, the polite and very sophisticated, civilized, Urizenic forms that Pope and Dryden made use of.
Here he’s using primarily a dah-duh-duh, dah-duh-duh, dah-duh-duh. What is that? Dactylic. Mixed dacytlic. Dah-duh-duh.
“Whether on Ida’s shady brow,/ Or in the chambers of the East,/ The chambers of the sun, that now..” – It’s….
Student: It sounds iambic to me.
AG: Well, you can.. – “Whether on Ida’s shady brow.” You could. But, it’s “Whether on Ida’s shady….” It’s heavy-light-light, heavy-light, heavy-light, heavy – “Whether on Ida’s shady brow.”
Student: (Well, that’s partly true, but isn’t it true that often the first two lines will be in an unusual meter and then it settles into the meter that it’s going to be in? The language stays, but..)
AG: Well, I say it is mixed, but there is a dactylic in the first line, there are two dactylics in the second line, there are two dactylics in the third line and there’s one dactyl in the fourth, and you could, if anything….
Student: I call it a choriambus.
AG: Well, it could be. Or it could be mixed. Actually, if we want an accounting of it….
Student: ( (since) (there are the extensions)
AG: If you want an accounting of it, I once went through that actually and did try to count them out, but what we might have beginning with the first line, is a dactyl then three … well, two trochee. A dactyl and two trochee. That is, dactyl would be dah-duh-duh. Trochee would be dah-duh. “Whether on Ida’s shady brow.” Second line will begin with a dactyl, two dactyls, or, if you wanted to pronounce “or” as a heavy – “Or in the chambers of the East.” So “the East” at the end would be “Or in the chambers of … chambers of the East,” you’d end up with an iamb.
Student: It would three unstressed and one stressed (no?)
AG: Three unstressed?
Student: “Or in the Chambers of the East.”
AG: Well, I’m just breaking it down to whatever’s simplest. “Or” – stress, unstress, unstress, stress, unstress, unstress, stress, unstress, stress. Or, actually what it is….
Student: You wouldn’t….
[Allen turns to the blackboard to assist in the explanation]
Student: Ah!
AG: If there is any way….
[some confusion]
AG: I don’t think there is an eraser here. Is there an …
Peter Orlovsky: I’ll get one. Let me get one.
AG: … eraser here?
Peter Orlovsky: I’ll get one, Allen.
AG: I think maybe we might (need) some space to work with.
Student: Okay.
AG: Because you can’t do it abstractly.
Student: Do you think it might be more natural to say “Whether on” and then on “in” put the stress on “in”? …like, “in the chambers of the East”?
AG: Well, let’s get it up there. Let’s get the thing up there and find out. What was it? (Was it a) choriamb that you had?
Student: That’s what I hear.
AG: Choriambic would be bom-puh-duh-bom. Bom-puh-duh-bom. Bom-puh-duh-bom. “Whether on Ida” – the beginning could be choriambic. “Whether on Ida’s shady” – but it’s just one choriamb there. You could divide it any way you want, but I think it’s dah-duh-duh, dah-duh-duh. It’s more of a pulsation of dah-duh-duh, dah-duh-duh, dah-duh-duh.
Student: Like when you have a Shakespeare line “When to the sessions of sweet silent thoughts” – that’s acknowledged to be iambic choriamb there.
AG: Well, acknowledged by pedants and professors, but it isn’t really an iambic line because it’s dah-duh-duh dah-duh-duh dah … “when to the sessions of sweet silent thought.”
Student: That’s forcing it, too. I mean it goes against all citations.
Student: Well….
AG: Where should we begin? “Whether on Ida’s shady brow” or “when to the sessions of sweet silent thought”?
Student: I don’t know.
AG: Or is this a more perfect line except the specialists? No. “Or in the chambers of the East.” This is not answering your question. You might try doing this with one of his long lines. “The chambers of the sun, that now/From antient melody has ceas’d.” Is that singular or plural?
Student: Singular.
Student: Is that supposed to be “ancient” (indecipherable)
AG: Yeah, A-N-T-I-E-N-T.
Student: Ah.
AG: Melody. Well, what I get is “WHETHer on I-da’s…” WHETHer on.” How would say it? “WHE-ther on I-da’s … WHETH-er on I’da’s SHA-dy BROW. WHETH-er on I-da’s SHA-dy BROW. WHETH-er on I’da’s SHAD-y brow. WHETH-er on I-da’s SHA-dy BROW. WHETH-er on I-da’s SHA-dy BROW. WHETH-er on I-da’s SHA-dy BROW. WHETH-er on I-da’s SHA-dy BROW.” Or you could also have a slightly heavier (accent on) “Whether” – WHETH-er on Ida’s” – depending on how you were saying (it). So..this could be considered choriambic. That’s known as choriambic. Bom-puh-duh-dah. “Whether on … WHETH-er on I” – bom-puh-duh-dah. “WHETH-er on I.” Or dactylic: “WHETH-er on” “I-da’s” – trochee (that’s called a trochee.) Do you folks all know this?
Student(s): No
AG: How many do not know how to make the heavy/light syllables? There are various notations. This is a simple one. For a heavier syllable a stroke, for a light a little cusp. What do they call those? There are other ways of doing it, but let’s not get too complicated. This system of notation is derived from classic Greek and Latin, originally to measure short and long syllables, but then adapted by English prosody experts to measure just accents, rather than the length of syllables.
So, “WHETH-er on I-da’s SHAD-y BROW.”…
to be continued.
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately sixteen minutes in and continuing to approximately twenty-seven-and-a-half minutes in