meter in the english speaking world!

[billy]

david, (crit mass) said he thought the meter in the USA and the UK/Australia was different, and that they don'y use the same syllable structure we do, so much so he thought about looking for a new forum, is that so. what do you think?

personally i'd be really surprised after reading a lot of American poets, many who emulated the sonnet and other forms perfectly.
what are your thoughts.

[Leanne]

Billy, it's actually fairly common for people to think that different accents change the basis of meter -- the "blank" accent of the BBC newsreader type is considered the "proper" one for reciting sonnets and so forth in certain circles. For most English speakers, however, the cadence of speech is much the same regardless of accent. Your sentences are formed in the same way as mine, whether you're from Liverpool or Los Angeles (it's best to leave the Irish out of this though, that Cork accent buggers everything up!) Meter is about patterns and emphasis, or stresses, to give the poetic line its pace and measure, so pronunciation does on rare occasions make finding the meter slightly difficult (the word "Renaissance" is a good example, since some put stress on the first syllable, and some on the second) -- but if you allow that the writer may pronounce the word slightly differently to yourself, it's actually not that big a trick. What I've mentioned before, about getting the meter fixed in your head before you read a poem aloud, will help with these variances.

Non-native English speakers often have greater trouble with our meter though, or more specifically working out syllables. Words in languages like Italian are much simpler to break up, since every time there's a vowel there's a new syllable, but we English speakers use doubles and diphthongs to confuse the issue Most dictionaries break words into syllables, though they're not always a great guide to pronunciation in another accent.

Rhyme is a little bit trickier though. The best rule to follow is to write it as you'd say it, and let the reader work it out -- on the assumption that if you've used perfect rhymes in every other line and there's a chance that the two words in question could rhyme in some accent, then in the writer's accent they most likely do.

[billy]

i agree. the dialect thing can screw meter up even within the uk. a geordi or someone from down south actually sound like they're foreign.
asfor rhyme dialectically speaking it's the same. even class wise, the people who speak the queens english (wealthy or academe) say parth and barth. we say bath and path. they say poind and we sound pound. still it's not too hard to work out who the twats are

[abu nuwas]

Accent may affect the (audible) syllables spoken. In Sheffield, for example 'Tintintintin' means 'The tin (money) is not in the tin'. Plainly, it needs a similar metre and rhyme to follow it, rather than one to fit my translation. As Leanne points out, there are a number of words where the stress is disputed, usually longish words where there are plenty of syllables to choose from. They are so numerous that not one springs to mind, even though just a week ago, I had a discussion with my family about one word, and could not make up my mind what my own usage was -- probably both! Stress can change over time: Chekhov's play 'Ivanov' had the stress on the last syllable; but in post-Revolutionary Russia, it fell on the more proletarian penultimate.

There are non-English native speakers who find stress very difficult, principally,I think, those who come from places where it does not play the same part. A German or Russian, having mastered English, will not have a problem with stress, but, say, a Frenchman will.

Cadence is all. While at work, there was an Indian (Sid) who did not work for me, but near me. I observed that he felt very frustrated. The lit of his speech was so heavy, and in such peculiar places, that he was almost incommunicado, which was not helping his career-prospects. I noticed, however, that once one did understand, he was grammatically almost flawless. He had done a thing which many people learning a language do: take it to a 'get by' stage, and then fail to complete that final step. I took it upon myself to be fairly blunt, and said that he had little to do. I was on the point of urging him to simply mimic some stereotypical posh chap, when he spontaneously said 'You mean speak like this, old boy?' I told him that was precisely what I meant, and I don't know which of us went away the more bewildered. However, the cadence natural to him obviously would not have made sense in a written poem, save to him.

Billy -- The English dialects have derived from ancient roots, as has Lowland Scots. I wish pronunciation did unlock a wealthy key. And I am with Leanne over the Irish -- a case apart.

[Leanne]

On the Irish -- anyone who thinks we're tough on getting meter, rhyme and other techniques perfect should take a look at Dán Díreach, the Irish bardic form of poetry. Forget the idea of turning up to a quick online workshop -- those guys studied their entire lives to get it right, and some of them never managed it.

So before you complain, remember that it could be much worse

[billy]

that looks a bit angry hehe.
did anyone do dan direach in english or wasn't it possible.

if not wouldn't that fall under non english language poetry ?

[Leanne]

It is possible, kind of, if you follow the basics of alliteration, assonance and consonance with the dunadh rhyme... it's just torture But I'm only using it to illustrate that meter in English is pretty damn simple compared with some other traditions.

[billy]

it is if you're english speaking hehe,
i've been here in the philippines for almost 10 years and i can probably speak 50 words (not sentences, words)
i would love to be able to write poetry in more than my own language but thats nothing to do with meter.
do you think one needs a good knowledge of the language in order to use meter well or can good meter be created by those
with a lesser grasp?

[Leanne]

I couldn't honestly say, I've never tried being non-English-speaking before

I know a few poets who write in English as their second language and manage to handle the meter just fine -- one Spanish, one Czech, and a couple of Indians, so the base language doesn't seem to matter from those examples. Having said that, I know far more native English speakers who can't handle meter at all!

It really does come down to your ability to recognise patterns. Meter actually has very little to do with language itself, it's the mathematical part of poetry.

[billy]

yeah i grasped that with the iambic pentithingy hehe.
for which i'm grateful. i think that if you get an early immersion into poetry when your young, it's easier to comprehend and see such patterns when you're older. like anything i suppose. the premise being "the more you do, the better you do it" though i see some never improve.

[Leanne]

Some never want to improve. They start out with the attitude that they can't do it, so they just don't bother.

How many times do you see comments like "yeah, I know the meter's shite but I'm really bad at that so I just do it however".

[billy]

going off topic, people also have the knack of saying, i prefer to do this my way
so i don't need to learn about it. they want to call themselves poets yet they're not interested in the craft of it.

[Leanne]

I don't think that's off topic at all. I think that's a very big part of the problem.

People who believe that poetry is all about god-given talent, or inspiration from some esoteric muse that can't be taught and shouldn't be messed with really kind of annoy me. That's just plain arrogance, and wrong to boot.

Poetry is a craft, like any other, and can be taught. Very occasionally, if we're lucky, we might just employ that craft to such excellent effect that it transcends into something worth being called art.

[abu nuwas]

Yes --"My way" mysteriously often coincides with the lazy way. I know that from personal experience......

[billy]

i think most of us have gone through it, for the longest time i never bothered to read real poetry.
at the beginning i thought hall mark was what real poetry was all about. my sight concerning poetry was very tunnelled and myopic.