I’m an isolato this weekend, as Ron Silliman would put it. Some folk join together in Westchester and some strike out alone to Acadia National Park to hike in meter and rhyme. Silliman again: he set up Timothy Steele yesterday as a straw man to pontificate on the music of poetry, choosing a single stanza of a Steele poem (out of context and unadorned with any of the man’s better efforts,) in which I would agree with Ron: Steele crash landed reaching for a rhyme.
One word at a time. Or one step at a time when you’re hiking. Never look too far ahead. Never take your eye off your next footstep, be it iamb or trochee. Certainly anapestic. It’s the easiest way to fall. I suppose it could be a life lesson as well, but it’s certainly a tenet when writing in meter and rhyme. Never look too far ahead, but if you must, always prepare to backtrack when necessary.
My early ventures in rhyme and meter were filled with awkward bushwhacking to that next rhyme I wanted so desperately to use. Or in a similar fashion, I would bend my language to some stilted slope of speech just to suit my meter. I think I’m better at staying on the path these days, but I know there are still many times I plummet to some disastrous end.
There is a secret I think, and here I would like to shift my metaphor from hiking to surfing (being Acadia I have the luxury of both mountains and ocean at my side,) not a skill of mine but imagination is a wonderful thing. When writing in meter and rhyme, and wishing to write in some kind of regular speech, whichever kind that may be, it’s necessary to surf on the surface of the poem, and be willing to let the wave of meter and rhyme take you. It really is a matter of control. Give it up. Veer here and there, always using your skills to the best of your abilities, but also feeling the movement of the wave. Go with the flow. They used to call it the muse; you can call it the sea.
THERE AND GONE ….
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Here is an autumn hokku kindly shared by a reader in Japan: In a moment,It
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1 week ago
2 comments:
Greg,
Meter is so natural to me that I often force myself out of it. I usually only use rhyme in my "Clay Todd" poems, the soliloquies of an Adirondacker of no deep education.
He speaks in syllabic lines (which might tend towards metrical patterns) but his poems rhyme (usually, abab, I think, and often with half-rhymes). I use this trick (half-rhyme and syllabic verse, as opposed to full rhyme and accentual-syllabic verse), because it allows the possibility of a more naturally cadenced voice. Take that as a suggestion through your rhyming--or not.
Great to be at Acadia, one of my favorite places. But it inspires me more to photography than poetry, for reasons unknown.
Geof
I began writing in free verse but in the past ten years have slowly figured out meter. Now it's almost impossible me to write in anything other. So I understand completely what you're saying. As for Acadia, I can understand the inspiration for pictures. The landscape changes with every step. So does the view.
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