Free Verse : an Essay on Prosody

213 Pages·2014·6.556 MB·English

by  Hartman, Charles O

Free Verse

Free Verse
An Essay on Prosody
Charles O. Hartman
Princeton University Press
Princeton, New Jersey
Copyright © 1980 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
Guildford, Surrey
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be
found on the last printed page of this book
This book has been composed in VIP Bembo
Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books
arc printed on acid-free paper, and binding materials are
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University Press, Princeton, New Jersey
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Preface ix
Introduction
The Prehistory of Free Verse 3
Chapter One
Some Definitions 10
Chapta Two
Accentmlism, Isochrony, and the Musical Fallacy 29
Chapter Three
Free Verse and Prose 45
Chapter Four
Counterpoint 61
Chapter Five
The Discovery of Form 81
Chapter Six
The Discovery of Meter 106
Chapter Seven
Free Verse and Poetry 130
Chapter Eight
Some Contemporaries 144
Appendix
Full Texts of Three Quoted Poems 173
Notes 179
List of References 187
Index 195

Acknowledgments
"Bird-Witted," from Collected Poems, copyright 1941 by
Marianne Moore, renewed 1969 by Marianne Moore, is re­
printed with permission of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.,
and Faber and Faber, Ltd.
"The Dance," from Collected Later Poems, copyright 1944
by William Carlos Williams; and "Exercise," "Poem," and
excerpts from "Shadows," from Pictures from Brueghel and
Other Poems, copyright © 1955, 1962 by William Carlos Wil­
liams, are reprinted by permission of New Directions.
"The Cupola," from The Blue Estuaries, copyright © 1929,
1954, 1968 by Louise Bogan; and "Dream Song #29," from
77 Dream Songs, copyright © 1959, 1962, 1963, 1964 by John
Berryman, are reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Straus
& Giroux, Inc.
"Musee des Beaux Arts," from W. H. Auden: Collected
Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson, Random House, Inc.,
copyright © 1976; and "Valley Candle," from The Collected
Poems of Wallace Stevens, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., copyright ©
1968, are reprinted by permission of the publishers.
"Church Going" is reprinted from Philip Larkin, The Less
Deceived, 1952, by permission of The Marvell Press, England.
Excerpts from "Burnt Norton" are reprinted from T. S.
Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1962, by permission of Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Faber and Faber, Ltd.; copyright
1943 by T. S. Eliot; copyright 1971 by Esme Valerie Eliot.
"The Ground-Mist," from O Taste and See, copyright ©
1964 by Denise Levertov Goodman, is reprinted by permis­
sion of New Directions.
Seven lines of "Summer School," from The Life Beside This
One, copyright © 1975 by John N. Morris, are used by per­
mission of Atheneum Publishers.
Portions of "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," from
Acknowledgments
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, copyright © 1975 by John
Ashbery, are reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, Inc.
Four lines from "Chard Whitlow," by Henry Reed, are re­
printed from his book A Map of Verona by permission of
Jonathan Cape, Ltd.
Preface
A study of free verse must deal with its origins and develop­
ment, and therefore with the history of poetry in the twen­
tieth century. Yet my purpose here has been less historical
than theoretical. I wanted to understand, and explain my un­
derstanding as best I could, what free verse is and why it
works, as well as how it is related to other kinds of verse. The
examples—the analyses of poems on which my reader's con­
viction must finally rest—were chosen for the clarity with
which they demonstrate the ways of nonmetrical verse, and
sometimes for their representative nature. I have avoided
using poems that did not excite me. But the examples do not
by any means constitute an anthology of all the best modern
free verse; nor will the reader find, among their authors, all
the greatest poets of our century.
My interest in the questions explored here grew out of my
own experience in writing poetry, both metrical and nonmet­
rical. It was my father, Carl F. Hartman, who originally set
me on the track of several ideas presented in these chapters;
my first thanks are due to him. When the book began to take
shape, I had the splendid assistance of Jarvis Thurston, How­
ard Nemerov, Donald Finkel, and above all Naomi Lebowitz,
at Washington University. Later, a Fellowship from the Na­
tional Endowment for the Humanities to the School of Criti­
cism and Theory at the University of California, Irvine,
helped me to understand what I was doing in relation to some
present intellectual concerns; Barbara Herrnstein Smith, espe­
cially, confirmed the influence she had already exerted
through her book, Poetic Closure.
My thanks go also to Meredith Steinbach for her editorial
acumen. Hazard Adams kindly read the manuscript and
commented in helpful detail. Finally, I want to express my
gratitude to Dr. Catherine Wallace, of Northwestern Univer-