On Sun, 2 Aug 1998, Arwin wrote:
 
> Dear list,
>
> I've been doing some metrical analysis of T.S. Eliot's quatrain poems (cf.
> Pound's Hugh Selwyn Mauberly), which has resulted in the unexpected retort
> on said list that short/long is not an aspect of English poetry, only
> stress. Cuddon (where I always begin) is of two minds about the subject: on
> the one hand he talks about 'stressed or long' and 'unstressed or short',
> on the other he says under 'quantity' that "In English verse the duration
> of the vowels and syllables is important aesthetically but is of no
> metrical importance."
 
First, let me say (with all due respect to Prof. Korg) that I do not
recommend Harvey Gross's widely read _Sound and Form in Modern Poetry_, at
least for Pound.  Gross is hostile to Pound, and his sarcastically titled
chapter "The Celebrated Metric of EP" is an attempted put down.
 
The question of English quantity is a vexed one, of course.  I find the
most useful comment to be John Thompson's remark (in his book on the rise
of English meter in the 16th century) that, although quantity exists in
English, speakers of the language do not recognize it as meaningful and
therefore habitually ignore its existence.  This makes the construction of
a metrical system based on quantity highly problematic, if not impossible.
(I suppose this holds true for all Germanic languages--?)
 
There's little doubt about EP's fascination with English quantity, his
effort to write sapphics in "Apparuit" without merely substituting stress
for quantity, but writing "real" quantities.  Are there such quantities in
the free verse of _The Cantos_?  Probably, but hard to demonstrate.
 
My own approach is to say that EP alludes to classical meters in his more
obviously lyrical free verse, creating an "illusion" of quantity.  And I
find Charles Hartman's concept of "vers libere" as opposed to true "vers
libre" [see his book _Free Verse: An Essay_] useful as well.  EP alludes,
but is not bound by the rules of Latin or Greek metrics.
 
There is a small critical literature on this subject, mostly hidden away
in journals.  James Powell's "Light of Vers Libre" [Paideuma 8, Spring
'79] is seminal.  Two fine articles by John Kwan Terry, "The Prosodic
Theories of EP" [Papers on Lang & Lit '73] and "Pound and the Limits of
Prosody" [Stud in Eng Lit, Tokyo, '79] appeared and disappeared with
hardly a trace.  Ellen Stauder's contribution "Crystal Waves Weaving
Together" [Paideuma 26, Fall '97] carries on and extends this tradition.
 
My own article "The Metrical Contract of the Cantos" [J Modern Lit 15,
Summer '88] grows out of an earlier piece on "Pound's Quantities and
Absolute Rhythm" [Essays in Lit 4, '77].  The earlier piece argues that
for EP, "absolute rhythm" meant an absolute correspondence between rhythm
and emotion--regardless of medium--so that to translate a rhythm to
another language, or set it to music, the rhythm had to be preserved
exactly.  In the process, I discuss and scan "Apparuit" and "The Return."
Some of this material is repeated and extended in the "Metrical Contract"
piece, where I describe EP's practise as operating on a continuum from
metrical verse through vers libere through vers libre through prose, the
metrical practise reflecting the poetic context.
 
EP was interested, incidentally, in early attempts by phoneticists to
mechanically (& visually) graph English quantities, describing in one
passage "God's own Englishman" reciting poetry with a straw up his nose,
to Abbe Rousselot's phonoscope (I hope my memory serves me right).  Such
research, of course, has tended to raise more questions than it answers
about the ability of the ear (and the language instinct) to organize
rhythmic Gestalts out of apparent chaos.
 
                                Stephen Adams
                                [log in to unmask]
                                University of Western Ontario
                                London, Canada