Fifty Books Project 2023

 The Sounds of Poetry A Brief Guide by Robert Pinsky

 

While I may read an occasional biography or an article about an individual poet, I do not read a great deal about poetry as an art form.  Many years ago, I read Paul Fussell’s Poetic Meter and Poetic Form and it has been the spine of much of my understanding of the aesthetics of poetry ever since.  It is a wonderfully rich and rigorous little volume, but I must admit I never really mastered scansion to the level Fussell advocated.  He made it all seem very precise and technical and I have trouble remembering the difference between a troche and a dactyl.

 

I picked up this very brief book at The Strand a couple of years ago.  I wish I had read it right away – it has many of the virtues of Fussell’s more complex guide, with more of an eye towards the pleasures of poetry than the Art of Poetry.  As he says in the introduction, “The idea in the following pages is to help the reader hear more of what is going on in poems, and by hearing more to gain in enjoyment and understanding.”  Later, he says that essentially, the more you can notice about the sound of a poem, the more you can enjoy the poem.  If there is a fault here, it might be that Pinsky is sometimes bending over backwards to avoid sounding complex or academic.

 

He begins with the simple notion that poetry is essentially a vocal art.  While this may not be as universally true as Pinsky lets on (I think about concrete poetry, for example), it is a god starting point for his purposes.  He also immediately introduces the idea that there are no rules, but there are common practices or “principles” as he calls them.  He encourages the reader to experience these principles in poems themselves, suggesting that the best book about traditional metrics might be The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats, whereas a reader who would like to study free verse might try William Carlos Williams; an interest in short lines would be satisfied by Emily Dickinson.  In other words, his guide is clearly meant to supplement the habit of reading poems, not introduce it or replace it.

 

His guide is then divided into different aspects of sound in poetry:

 

In Accent and Duration, he sensibly observes that when we talk about stressed and unstressed syllables in a poem, we are talking about relative levels of stress:  “the stress on a syllable in English is not inherent in the sound, but relative.”  In a nutshell, not all iambs are created equal – the unstressed syllable in one iambic foot might be hit a little harder than the stressed syllable in the next iamb.  This variable is made even more nuanced when we recognize that syllables are of different vocal lengths.  He uses the word “popcorn” to demonstrate this nuance – the first syllable is stressed, but the second syllable is longer (depending, perhaps, on who is speaking, it could be much longer).  Simple as it is, this was something of a revelation for me.   I knew of both duration and accent as elements of sound, but I had not thought of them interacting in quite this way.  It also helped me understand why so many professors have insisted on scans of lines of poetry that were different from mine.  Not that everyone has their own meter, but that the rhythm of iambic pentameter is never as steady as we (teachers and professors) would like it to be.

 

Pinsky then tackles the line as a unit of poetry, in this case combining the examination with one of syntax.  His point here is that both the line and the word order contribute to the impact of a poem’s phrasing and that they can work together or be at odds with one another.  If the syntax of a phrase works to reinforce the shape of the line – in an end-stop line, for example – the phrasing gets one kind of power.  If the syntax and line structure are not reinforcing each other, but perhaps competing with each other (in enjambment) than the phrasing gets a different kind of power.  

 

Pinsky subsumes his discussion of rhyme in a more flexible category of like and unlike sounds – so that partial rhymes, consonance and another discussion of duration.  Again, his emphasis is on sounds in relation to one another:  “Rhyme, however one defines that term, is a matter of degree, and not necessarily an either/or toggle.”  Like and unlike sounds work together to build the experience of the poem, often calling attention to each other.

 

All three of these chapters feel like preludes to his final chapter on Blank Verse and Free Verse.  Pinsky immediately rejects the notion that these forms are any less formal than metered, rhymed poetry, telling us, “the form in some cases is based on a measure, in others it is not.” And later, “Free verse might be described as the most successful alternative to penatameters.”  

 

Throughout, Pinsky offers clear and helpful readings of various lines and verses of poetry (rarely examining an entire poem) to illustrate his points.  The lines are varied – from many poets and many time periods.  In what strikes me as a particular tour de force, he scans a section of Abbot and Costellos “Who’s on First” routine and illustrates that much of it is in iambic pentameter: “What’s the name of the guy on second base?” I have not yet turned back to that classic to see how this Guide has enriched my pleasure, but I have benefitted from its guidance in reading and rereading other great poets.