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Alive and well, Anon. Just working on my (apparently epic) Fantasy series. Sidney is great and so lascivious.

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And thanks so much for your informative comment. My thoughts are as follows:

• I’m a poet, not a metrist. So while the hypotheses and elaborate systems cooked up by any number of metrists, each claiming to be the final word on the matter (seriously), can be interesting in an academic sort of way, they offer zero insight into my work as a poet who, unlike the vast majority of poets, actually writes meter. The work of the poet and the work of the metrist, while they both dip their hands in the same dye, is very different. The latter really has more to do with a theory of language than poetry.
• I own Attridge’s book (and have read the others you mention). I can’t speak to its value from a metrist’s perspective, but from the poet’s perspective, Attridge’s system offers me nothing that the classical system doesn’t. In the entirety of Attridge’s book, he offers no new insights into the poetry that he scans. Nothing. Constable might write that Attridge’s book makes George T Wright’s “metrical system” obsolete, but Constable’s assertion betrays a fundamental misunderstanding (or failure to gasp) what is of value to the poet. The fact is that Wright’s so called “metrical system” is what poets (starting with Edmund Spenser among other Elizabethan poets) used for hundreds of years. Wright didn’t make this system up. Wright analyzed Shakespeare’s poetry consistent with the way meter was understood and taught in Shakespeare’s day (including such terms as “feminine ending” for example). That is, if one wants to understand what Shakespeare or other poets might have been thinking when they wrote metrical poetry, then one needs to understand meter as they did, not as Attridge does. If one is less interested in the poetry, and more in the language itself, then Attridge is fine. Using the same system of foot-based meter as Shakespeare gives us potential insight into what Shakespeare may have intended as regards stress and meaning (see my post above). Attridge’s system is a theoretical construct of interest to academics, but offering nothing over and above what the classical system already offers to the practicing poet (or to the reader seeking insight into a metrical poem’s meaning). He certainly offers nothing to me—as a poet.

“The term “iambic” is often used but is misleading, since it is borrowed from classical metre, which is constructed in quite different way from English verse. The classical notion of metrical “feet” is particularly inappropriate to English prosody.”

• From an academic theoretician’s standpoint, this may be true; but from the poet’s perspective, his statement betrays an almost willful ignorance. It’s true that we borrowed “iambic” from classical meter, but (and I don’t mean to sound snarky) so what? Something like 80% (?) of our vocabulary is borrowed from Greek, Latin and French (among others) but no one argues that these words are “inappropriate” to the English language. The meaning of the word “iambic” has evolved alongside English prosody and is perfectly appropriate (and was/is to hundreds of years of poets). To write that we must now set aside the term because it originally applied to classical meter is a breathtaking logical fallacy that if applied universally would eliminate most of our English vocabulary.
• None of this is to say that Attridge’s book (or generative metrics in general) doesn’t have insightful or interesting things to say about English as a language. I don’t mean to diss your interest in it. Not at all. But from the poet’s and reader’s perspective, generative metrics has nothing to offer (or rather, offers nothing that the classical system of metrics doesn’t already). The classical system of metrics in use for hundreds of years is simple and elegant; and those using it have produced some of the most beautiful poetry known to the language.
• The classical system is a tool. That’s all it is. It’s a screwdriver and it’s never been improved. It may not accurately reflect what “the language” is doing (from the linguist’s/metrist’s perspective) but it has and continues to work beautifully for poets.

:)

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No time to go into depth, but a few points:

1. Notice how multisyllabic words are treated differently from 1-syllable words. The poet is careful to place multisyllabic words so that their strongest syllable always falls in an “even” position. This is one of the fundamental observations of “generative metrics.”
2. For intros to generative metrics: A) Generative Metrics: An Overview, B) Chaucer and the Study of Prosody (Halle & Keyser–“The article that started it all.”)
3. There is debate, of course, between generative and foot-based theorists. Nevertheless, once you look for it, the differing treatment accorded multi- vs mono-syllabic words, in many poets, is there.
4. For more traditional approaches, see A) Milton’s Prosody, by Bridges, which he wrote, upon request, as an antidote to the dee-DUM dee-DUM misunderstanding being taught in schools, and B) Poetic Rhythm, an Introduction, by Derek Attridge (or his longer Rhythms of English Poetry). B) In a review of Attridge’s Rhythms (Albion, New Series 42 (1996) 64-71), John Constable writes [because of this book], “even recent works as apparently definitive as … George T. Wright’s Shakespeare’s Metrical Art employ a method of metrical analysis that must, post-Attridge, be regarded as obsolete.”
5. Some interesting points from Jill Mann’s 2005 edition of The Canterbury Tales (Penguin, 2005): A) “The term “iambic” is often used but is misleading, since it is borrowed from classical metre, which is constructed in quite different way from English verse. The classical notion of metrical “feet” is particularly inappropriate to English prosody.” (p.lxv) B) On p. lxix, footnote 12 references Halle & Keyser, as well as Attridge.

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Hey, that’s really cool! Are you her granddaughter or grandson? And did you know her? I just did a quick search for anything she wrote, and found this. I think that when I wrote the post, I searched for other writings and didn’t find anything. And I’m really happy that she had a good life. :)

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https://poemshape.wordpress.com/tag/poems-for-your-scrap-book/

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Yes, sir, I knew what you meant, but I changed the subject because it was what I was thinking about. You know, I can almost see writers such as Wordsworth and Tennyson as the precursors to the modern lineated prose of the contemporary prosetrist if you drill down to the valuing of emotion over imagery and conversation over figurative language. No one would ever mistake the verse of Pope or Byron for prose–or Keats–or Frost–or Dickinson, nor would their verse ever work quite as well written in a prose form. So, yeah! Right on, man! I agree with Milton, but I have to wonder how much his daughters influenced his writing. Did they suggest changes as he dictated to them? They knew how to read Greek, but apparently did not know what the words meant. I’ll have to check into that. Sorry that I have gotten so far off the topic of your poem. I’ll stop now. :)

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