Yvor Winters 202

from A YEAR with YVOR WINTERS 365 Selections from the Writings of Yvor Winters with Commentary by Ben Kilpela:

3/1 - On Metrical Ambiguities in Free Verse

from the essay "THE INFLUENCE OF METER ON POETIC CONVENTION, SECTION III: THE SCANSION OF FREE VERSE" from "PRIMITIVISM AND DECADENCE" (1937), republished in "IN DEFENSE OF REASON"

In the poem last quoted [Winter's own imagist poem "The Bitter Moon", written early in his career in free verse], much of the metrical ambiguity arises from the use of an unusually long foot, which allows quantity an opportunity somewhat greater than usual to obscure the accent. In the "at its word? I have believed," "word" receives the primary accent, but "believed", which receives a secondary accent, is longer, and may seem more heavily accented to the unwary. In the line "flesh; the eye is a shadow", the heavy accent goes to "eye", but "flesh", because of its position at the beginning of the line and before the semi-colon, receives more length than it would receive in most places, and may seem for the moment to receive the main accent. In most cases the reader will find that the ambiguity is one of alternatives; that is, he will naturally place a heavy accent on one word or on the other, so that the pattern will not be damaged. Ambiguities of this sort, and within the limits just mentioned, may be a source of value; they are, as I have said, one of the principle beauties of Milton's versification. If the ambiguity, in free verse, however, ceases to be a hesitation between alternatives, and becomes more general, the metrical norm is destroyed.


The Bitter Moon

Dry snow runs burning
on the ground like fire--
the quick of Heell spin on
the wind. Should I believe
in this your body, take it
at its word? I have believed
in nothing. Earth burns with a
shadow that has held my
flesh; the eye is a shadow
that consumes the mind
Scream into air. The voices
of the dead still vibrate--
they will find them, threading
all the past with twinging
wires alive like hair in cold.
These are the nerves
of deat. I am its brain

You are the way, the oath
I take. I hold to this--
I, bent and thwarted by a will
to live among the living dead
instead of the dead living; I,
become a voice to sound for.
Can you feel through Space,
imagine beyond Time?

                      The
snow alive with moonlight
licks about my ankles.
an you find this end?


Michael, here's another one whose lines ends with articles. Wise move on his part turning formal.