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  • Have you ever seen a poem

    From Ed Cryer@21:1/5 to All on Fri Jun 19 20:33:48 2020
    Have you ever seen a poem
    Written with beats eight to a line?
    No sign of iambs, nor of rhymes,
    But simple trochees numb'ring four?
    And if you did, what would you think?
    Perhaps that after a few lines
    You'd grow so tired and bored withal
    That sleep would fall upon you till
    The very rafters all around
    Would slip into the same profound
    Deep tedium like a burial ground.

    Did Henry Longfellow know that?
    And still he went ahead and wrote
    The Song of Hiawatha --?
    Perhaps he did, but then again
    Perhaps he didn't want to say
    Lest he should thus prejudge us all
    And pit us 'gainst his masterpiece.

    Ed

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  • From John W Kennedy@21:1/5 to Ed Cryer on Sat Jun 20 15:25:34 2020
    On 6/19/20 3:33 PM, Ed Cryer wrote:
    Have you ever seen a poem
    Written with beats eight to a line?
    No sign of iambs, nor of rhymes,
    But simple trochees numb'ring four?
    And if you did, what would you think?
    Perhaps that after a few lines
    You'd grow so tired and bored withal
    That sleep would fall upon you till
    The very rafters all around
    Would slip into the same profound
    Deep tedium like a burial ground.

    Did Henry Longfellow know that?
    And still he went ahead and wrote
    The Song of Hiawatha --?
    Perhaps he did, but then again
    Perhaps he didn't want to say
    Lest he should thus prejudge us all
    And pit us 'gainst his masterpiece.

    Ed

    Anyone who knows his history knows Longfellow wrote his verses on the
    deeds of Hiawatha out of admiration for the poem of the Finn Elias
    Lönnrot called the epic Kalevala. Christ Church Oxford’s Ludovico
    Carolus then wrote a satire on the art of photographing in the “easy
    running metre”. Last came Cryer, in an effort to create a satire, also,
    but his effort failed completely.

    --
    John W. Kennedy
    "The blind rulers of Logres
    Nourished the land on a fallacy of rational virtue."
    -- Charles Williams. "Taliessin through Logres: Prelude"

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  • From Ed Cryer@21:1/5 to John W Kennedy on Sun Jun 21 18:38:52 2020
    John W Kennedy wrote:
    On 6/19/20 3:33 PM, Ed Cryer wrote:
    Have you ever seen a poem
    Written with beats eight to a line?
    No sign of iambs, nor of rhymes,
    But simple trochees numb'ring four?
    And if you did, what would you think?
    Perhaps that after a few lines
    You'd grow so tired and bored withal
    That sleep would fall upon you till
    The very rafters all around
    Would slip into the same profound
    Deep tedium like a burial ground.

    Did Henry Longfellow know that?
    And still he went ahead and wrote
    The Song of Hiawatha --?
    Perhaps he did, but then again
    Perhaps he didn't want to say
    Lest he should thus prejudge us all
    And pit us 'gainst his masterpiece.

    Ed

    Anyone who knows his history knows Longfellow wrote his verses on the
    deeds of Hiawatha out of admiration for the poem of the Finn Elias
    Lönnrot called the epic Kalevala. Christ Church Oxford’s Ludovico
    Carolus then wrote a satire on the art of photographing in the “easy running metre”. Last came Cryer, in an effort to create a satire, also,
    but his effort failed completely.


    I think a trochaic metre is as natural to the Finnish language as iambs
    are to English. That's because Finnish words are normally stressed on
    the first syllable.

    I feel that Longfellow might just as well have tried hexameter verse,
    which again is alien to English rhythms.

    My iambic satire was of any attempt to write heroic verse in English quadrameters. It just doesn't work.


    Ed

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