Renowned poets and experts in metrics respond to Robert Wallace's pivotal essay which clarifies and simplifies methods of studying poetry. Former United States Poet Laureate Robert Hass has called Wallace's essay a paradigm shift in our understanding of English prosody.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The quaint study of poetic rhythm and meter, called prosody, seldom attracts much light. The province of scholars and bewildered grad students, prosody has its few classics texts--by Lord Saintsbury, Paul Fussel, Harvey Gross, Annie Finch--and its own rarefied nomenclature, much of it still carrying signs of its Greek origins: iambs, trochees, anapests; pentameters etc. But judging by this book, it seems there is something afoot in the study of meter. Editor Baker (After the Reunion) circulated an essay by poet and teacher Robert Wallace to 14 poets, an essay that put forth 10 points for clarifying and simplifying the study of English meter. Wallace's points mostly derive from his single observation that all English meter is iambic--that is, in a rising rhythm--and that anything noniambic is built from substitutions over an iambic beat. He also tosses out two of the four traditional kinds of meter--syllabic (counting syllables, a la Marianne Moore) and quantitative (a peculiar holdover from Greek poetry, where long and short vowels were counted). There are varying degrees of dissent and consent among the 14 respondents, with Eavan Boland, Annie Finch and Dana Gioia mostly dissenting, Charles O. Hartman and Robert Hass mostly consenting. The other contributors are Rachel Hadas, Margaret Holley, John Frederick Nims, David J. Rothman, Timothy Steele, Lewis Turco, Barry Weller, Richard Wilbur and Susanne Woods. The essays without exception are lively and entertaining; the jousting atmosphere carries the day. Altogether, one can't help but be impressed by the level of engagement the poets have with such technical issues, and the passion with which they argue their points. A provocative read and a fine resource for all working and would-be poets.
Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In 1993, the poet Robert Wallace sent editor Baker and others an essay (included here) called "Meter in English," which seeks to clarify its subject through a series of propositions, the main being that there are only iambic meters in English. Baker, the author of four books of poetry himself (most recently, After the Reunion, Univ. of Arkansas Pr., 1994), circulated the essay to 14 distinguished formal poets, including Eavan Boland, Dana Gioia, Rachel Hadas, Robert Haas, and Richard Wilbur, each of whom has written a response. These rejoinders range from nodding agreement to vigorous challenge; Annie Finch, for example, sticks up for anapests and dactyls with a devotee's zeal. In the final essay, Robert Wallace returns to meditate on the points raised by the others. There may be more to say on the subject of English prosody in the future, but anyone who tries will have to begin with this exhaustive consideration of the topic. Highly recommended.?David Kirby, Florida State Univ., Tallahassee
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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I Like the Way the Rhythm Makes Me Jump and Move,
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This review is from: Meter in English: A Critical Engagement (Paperback)
In Meter in English, Baker convenes a symposium of poets and critics to contend with a Robert Wallace essay in which he attempts to regularize the contemporary discussion of meter by way of ten propositions he hopes will become consensus. Many of these propositions are terminological(he hopes, for example, to rename the "feminine ending" the less elegant "extra syllable" or "e-s" ending), but others are at the heart of a lively and ongoing debate about the very nature of English language verse (as in Wallace's assertion that "anapestic, trochaic, and dactylic meters do not exist in English.")
The responses, from the likes of Eavan Boland, Annie Finch, Dana Gioia, John Frederick Nims, etc., are widely varied. There is some consensus on small matters (syllabics are not meter proper, but rather a kind of patterning useful for free verse composition), and an acknowledgement all around that prosodic terminologies are not uniformly deployed by practicing poets and critics. It is clear, though, that there will be no consensus on all ten of Wallace's assertions, and by book's end, the reader might feel as though consensus is, anyway, not so advisable as the bigger picture of contemporary prosodic practice composed by the discussion itself.
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