Yeats' Metrical Confusions

[missylovalova]

Hi all,

It's a quick couple of questions which I guess one either knows or doesn't... just can't seem to find the answer through Google alone.


Yeats' Easter 1916, stanza 2... predominantly iambs with some substitutions. I've read in critical studies that If a line has 1 iamb, and then 2 variegated feet, it would still be considered an 'iambic trimeter'.... take for example these lines:



Hearts with one purpose alone (trochee / spondee / anapaest - this may be incorrect as stress on 'one' seems ambiguous)

Through summer and winter seem (iamb / phyrric / trochee)

Enchanted to a stone (iamb / iamb / iamb)

To trouble the living stream. (iamb / anapest / iamb)



So some critics would still call lines 2-4 iambic trimeter. Which makes no sense to me since they are not three iambs in a row. Has any one else come across this?

____


And my second question is this line here:

Minute by minute they change; (dactyl / dactyl / 'extra stress')

- What is this extra stress named? A masculine ending? I thought masculine endings had to be a pair in a rhyming couplet where both rhyming end-words must be stressed syllables (as opposed to weak syllables, aka feminine-ending)?

- My gut is to call it a dactylic-dimeter with an extra stress on 'change' to emphasise... well... 'change', which is the core issue of the stanza as a whole. But there must be a technical term for this extra stress....




Thanks for reading. All help appreciated

[MorpheusSandman]

Your problem is in thinking that Easter 1916 is written in accentual syllabic verse when it's merely accentual trimeter. Accentual syllabic is where the stresses/accents are regular and in line with the syllables, while accentual verse does away with the syllabic regularity and just maintains a certain number of stresses/accents at each line. Accentual verse was actually dominant in early English verse (Beowulf, Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain) and it wasn't until Chaucer that accentual syllabic became the norm. A great many of modern and late romantic/early modern verse poets (Yeats among them, but also famously WH Auden in his The Age of Anxiety) went back to accentual verse for much of their work.

Generally, most accentual syllabic verse establishes the meter in the first few lines, and then only varies it rarely for affect, and then things like hyper-metrical substitutions (triple-timed anapests and dactyls) are extremely rare, if they're used at all. In Yeats' poem there's never any such regularity so it's definitely only accentual.

As for your second question, while it's not really applicable to accentual verse, there is a name for a foot with missing syllables called a Catalectic. You see catalectics most frequently in "headless" opening feet of anapestic or iambic poetry, or "footless" closing feet of trochaic/dactylic poetry, which could describe your example. Anyway, you'd call that example, if it wasn't accentual verse, dactylic trimeter with a catalectic ending.

One final point: accentual verse is used mostly in dimeter, trimeter, and tetrameter verse, while accentual-syllabic mostly in pentameter. The reason why is that the former three are naturally more sing-songy than pentameter (most popular music is written in accentual tetrameter going back to popular ballads), so pentameter needs the syllabic regularity to create a discernible musical rhythm, but that musicality can more closely imitate the speaking voice. In operatic terms, you might think of accentual trimeter/tetrameter as arias while accentual-syllabic pentameter is more like recitatives, or the middle-ground between song and spoken prose. That versatility between song and natural prose is what made it a natural fit for the dramatic verse of the Renaissance dramatists.

[missylovalova]

That's interesting, and very helpful. I'm familiar with old English meter which follows a pretty established set of rules. It is easier to grasp than Yeats I felt, since Yeats revels in breaking rules. And having had a look at accentual verse and accentual-syllabic, the whole thing suddenly makes a lot of sense. Especially the musical resonances.

As for catalectic metre, I hadn't thought to call it that since a dactyl is a tri-syllabic foot and there is only one leftover stress:

Minute by minute they change
/ x x / x x /

Can it still be called a dactylic with catalectic ending, OR should it just be accentual trimeter?

[MorpheusSandman]

As for catalectic metre, I hadn't thought to call it that since a dactyl is a tri-syllabic foot and there is only one leftover stress:

Minute by minute they change
/ x x / x x /

Can it still be called a dactylic with catalectic ending, OR should it just be accentual trimeter?

It IS accentual trimeter, but if it WERE a poem written in dactylic trimeters you'd call it a catalectic ending. There's actually a relatively new verse form that makes strict use of such a meter called the Double Dactyl. They're quite fun, kinda like limericks. I wrote one myself

Blankety blankety
Cursing is requisite
When you see idiots
Doing their thing.
Yell at them loudly and
Argumentatively,
Censure your language like
Bees would their sting.

Note the form is: double dactyl x 3, double dactyl with catelectic ending, double dactyl, double dactyl (made of one word), double dactyl, double dactyl with catalectic ending

[AuntShecky]

There's actually a relatively new verse form that makes strict use of such a meter called the Double Dactyl. They're quite fun, kinda like limericks. I wrote one myself

Blankety blankety
Cursing is requisite
When you see idiots
Doing their thing.
Yell at them loudly and
Argumentatively,
Censure your language like
Bees would their sting.

Yes, if you think forty-eight years is "relatively new." Maybe in the rarefied realm of poetry, they're like dog years. The double dactyl verse form was invented by Paul Pascal, Anthony Hecht, and John Hollander way back in 1966.

Your ditty has the meter correct, but it's not quite a "true" double dactyl. Line #2 in the double dactyl has to be the name of a famous person whose name (in)conveniently happens to be a double dactyl, like Emily Dickinson or Edward G. Robinson. Also, you've correctly put a double dactyl single word in line 6, but the three creators of the form stipulated that this word can never have been used in a previous double dactyl poem. (I'm not an expert on the DD, so I can't authoritatively say whether "argumentatively" has ever been employed before.)

A variation of the double dactyl was invented by one Bruce Newling in 1989. It is called a "McWhirtle," supposedly a "looser," less strenuous verse form to write. The first line doesn't have to be a nonsense double dactyl, like "higgety-piggety." When it comes to that virginal double dactyl single word in the second stanza, you can safely let that strict criterion slide.

Also, you can add an extra unstressed syllable to the beginning of the first line of each stanza. McWhirtles are supposed to retain the double dactyl rhythm but you can move syllables to the next line for readability.

[Calidore]

way back in 1966.

Ouch.

[MorpheusSandman]

Yes, if you think forty-eight years is "relatively new."

I actually do, considering the thousands of years quantitative verse has been around, and the hundreds of years of, say, Iambic pentamter and sonnets and ballads, etc. Most of the forms we've inherited are ancient, so anything within 100 years is "relatively new" compared the others.

Your ditty has the meter correct, but it's not quite a "true" double dactyl. Line #2 in the double dactyl has to be the name of a famous person whose name (in)conveniently happens to be a double dactyl, like Emily Dickinson or Edward G. Robinson.

The thing about closed forms is that their rules are meant to be stretched and altered even to the breaking point, at which point everyone starts stupidly arguing about what "is" and "isn't" an example of that form. Villanelle's refrains are SUPPOSED to be the same, yet a great many poets vary the refrain while keeping the form otherwise; Sonnets' voltas are SUPPOSED to come at line 9, but someone like Milton loved displacing it for poetic effect. There are as many examples as there are forms. I think whenever everything in a closed form is there except one aspect is changed (like my eschewing of a "proper" name in l2), then you can still call it an example of that form while noting the lone variation.

Also, you've correctly put a double dactyl single word in line 6, but the three creators of the form stipulated that this word can never have been used in a previous double dactyl poem. (I'm not an expert on the DD, so I can't authoritatively say whether "argumentatively" has ever been employed before.)

I have no idea if it's ever been used either, but this is another of the "rules" of this form that I consider rather silly (of course, the whole form itself is rather silly); like someone is supposed to keep track of ever single-word double-dactyl that's been used.

A variation of the double dactyl was invented by one Bruce Newling in 1989. It is called a "McWhirtle," supposedly a "looser," less strenuous verse form to write. The first line doesn't have to be a nonsense double dactyl, like "higgety-piggety." When it comes to that virginal double dactyl single word in the second stanza, you can safely let that strict criterion slide.

Also, you can add an extra unstressed syllable to the beginning of the first line of each stanza. McWhirtles are supposed to retain the double dactyl rhythm but you can move syllables to the next line for readability.

Then I guess I wrote a McWhirtle. Meh, this is one of those situations where I don't think there's really enough meaningful variation between the two to merit having two different labels to describe them.

[AuntShecky]

Maybe we should've put all this in a separate thread in respect to the OP, whose question, after all, was about Yeats. (I am sorry about this.)

Auntie