Fine Lines :: Welch's "Why Prosody?"

Why Prosody?

(Dr. Don Welch is a retired English Professor, Emeritus, from the University of Nebraska at Kearney .)

If you are someone who likes poetry and believes it should sing, even subtly, then you may be interested in prosody. Prosody, which means to sing, asks us to focus upon a poem's repeated rhythms, sounds, and shapes. It asks us to revel in deliberate listening.

Current poets rarely talk about poetry singing. Because conversation is now the medium of poetry, verse is almost always described as a way of saying, not singing. Currently, almost everything, even art, has been roughed up and taken down. Older periods of verse, however, asked for more musical languages. Poetry was language as it ought to be, not language as it is.

In our time prosody must open its arms wider than it ever has. It must not only treat the poetry of closed forms but the acres of open ones, which have been written over the past one hundred and fifty years. And it must do so without waging wars, pitting the Earl of Closet against his American relatives, the Jeeves of Grass. Why can't prosody be like the child who delights in playing old games one moment, then making up new ones the next?

And in doing so, it must continue to fathom the wellsprings of values. Poems, and attitudes about them, don't happen in cultural vacuums. Current executives, for example, may dress more casually than their predecessors, but they are still supposed to earn big bucks for their investors. Conversational poets may wear jeans, but we still ask them to speak profundities. Although the King James Version of the Bible is being dressed down to make it plainer and more gender-kind, iambic pentameter poets, dressing up to speak up, still tuxedo themselves in breeches and doublets like Romeos on prom night.

In the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, when the world picture was the Great Chain of Being, everyone and everything was given a link by God. A man's ethical and artistic commandments were to fill up his place righteously and beautifully. As such, closed forms like the sonnet were miniatures of a greater subconscious order. Now, some poets, even those who like their sports played on closed courts and gridirons, assume sonnets and other traditional poems are fill-in-the-blank exercises. To often these critics, interested only in fashions, which mimic their own writing, have rims for eyes and judgments, which are holy. Most prosodists, whatever their other failings, have latitudes of tastes.

When the Great Tree replaced the great Chain of Being as a world picture, more than a change from the inorganic to the organic occurred. Just as power descended from God/kings/popes in the older order, now it ascended from people and nature. In poetry this meant turning away from inherited forms to those of growing forms. Poetic novelty, which once embraced primarily the content of poems, now opened its arms to novel shapes as well. Because the artistic commandment implicit in the Great Trees was to grow, poets, relying upon the seeds of uniqueness in each poem, grew new forms as well. Each verse could celebrate itself and sing itself and what it assumed its poet assumed, and his readers as well. This was a heady time, and for a while there was no possibility of regress. A poet could put his faith in a poem's in-forming origins just as Karl Marx could believe in the certainty of his dialectic. Or westward moving Americans could trust something called Manifest Destiny.

Poems, open or closed, have always been substantial loves for those who needed them. If, as John Ciardi once said, "Poetry is the least engaged art in any modem society," that doesn't mean it can't prove engaging to some. That it can stay alive in worlds of apathy, stupidity, and unspeakable violence is no small miracle. Although some would call it a mutant, poetry, even in our times, has a healthy DNA.

In its simplest form, prosody classifies the repetitions found in verse, giving them names like meter, alliteration, and quatrain. This is why it is sometimes called the science of versification. The art of versification poses very different questions. For example, how does a rhythm contribute to what a poet is saying? Are the sounds of a poem more than pleasing; are they integral to the poet's thoughts and feelings? Are the white spaces in a poem silences which champion meaning? Are they the presence of a meaningful absence? Do the systems of a poem jar or blend?

When read aloud, the best poems have always produced a continuing taste on our tongues. Imagine, then, words without poetic sounds or rhythms, as if they were wooden bowls without a seasoned substance. Or, to change the metaphor, a verse, which reads, like bad prose, a sort of fashionable hovel. Although dullness is a happenstance in all our lives, it is rarely the pulse of good poetry, except, of course, when the ache of lacerating sounds and disjunctive rhythms provide a dissonance for our despair.

Poets who write good rhythms have ears, which listen to themselves. One of the most tragic things to occur in the second half of the last century was the death of beauty. It was a death, which blighted everything, including poetry. Disdaining music in verse, some poets went after an in your face kind of content, but after so many shocks, a dullness set in. Now, when almost every poet reads like every other poet, it has become exhausting to be uniquely the same. Yearning for yeast but having a taste for the unleavened, too many poets gag upon anything seasoned. Prosody revels in seasonings.

Take the music out of poetry, and there is no prosody. Put on the best prosodic ears; however, and you will discover that the best verse is no rinky-tinky waltz across the page. It is a dance, which matters, and a matter, which dances. And although some of poetry's best readers have one eye for form and another for content, and insights to marry the two, no one can cage poetry in prosodic descriptions. There is no net the protean animal of poetry can't slip through. But as Branko Miljkovic says, "He who doesn't know how to listen to a poem will listen to a storm." Prosody is very deliberate listening. Those who beat up on its elements only succeed in darkening themselves.

Why Prosody? (Dr. Don Welch is a retired English Professor, Emeritus, from the University of Nebraska at Kearney .) If you are someone who likes poetry and believes it should sing, even subtly, then you may be interested in prosody. Prosody, which means to sing, asks us to focus upon a poem's repeated rhythms, sounds, and shapes. It asks us to revel in deliberate listening. Current poets rarely talk about poetry singing. Because conversation is now the medium of poetry, verse is almost always described as a way of saying, not singing. Currently, almost everything, even art, has been roughed up and taken down. Older periods of verse, however, asked for more musical languages. Poetry was language as it ought to be, not language as it is. In our time prosody must open its arms wider than it ever has. It must not only treat the poetry of closed forms but the acres of open ones, which have been written over the past one hundred and fifty years. And it must do so without waging wars, pitting the Earl of Closet against his American relatives, the Jeeves of Grass. Why can't prosody be like the child who delights in playing old games one moment, then making up new ones the next? And in doing so, it must continue to fathom the wellsprings of values. Poems, and attitudes about them, don't happen in cultural vacuums. Current executives, for example, may dress more casually than their predecessors, but they are still supposed to earn big bucks for their investors. Conversational poets may wear jeans, but we still ask them to speak profundities. Although the King James Version of the Bible is being dressed down to make it plainer and more gender-kind, iambic pentameter poets, dressing up to speak up, still tuxedo themselves in breeches and doublets like Romeos on prom night. In the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, when the world picture was the Great Chain of Being, everyone and everything was given a link by God. A man's ethical and artistic commandments were to fill up his place righteously and beautifully. As such, closed forms like the sonnet were miniatures of a greater subconscious order. Now, some poets, even those who like their sports played on closed courts and gridirons, assume sonnets and other traditional poems are fill-in-the-blank exercises. To often these critics, interested only in fashions, which mimic their own writing, have rims for eyes and judgments, which are holy. Most prosodists, whatever their other failings, have latitudes of tastes. When the Great Tree replaced the great Chain of Being as a world picture, more than a change from the inorganic to the organic occurred. Just as power descended from God/kings/popes in the older order, now it ascended from people and nature. In poetry this meant turning away from inherited forms to those of growing forms. Poetic novelty, which once embraced primarily the content of poems, now opened its arms to novel shapes as well. Because the artistic commandment implicit in the Great Trees was to grow, poets, relying upon the seeds of uniqueness in each poem, grew new forms as well. Each verse could celebrate itself and sing itself and what it assumed its poet assumed, and his readers as well. This was a heady time, and for a while there was no possibility of regress. A poet could put his faith in a poem's in-forming origins just as Karl Marx could believe in the certainty of his dialectic. Or westward moving Americans could trust something called Manifest Destiny. Poems, open or closed, have always been substantial loves for those who needed them. If, as John Ciardi once said, "Poetry is the least engaged art in any modem society," that doesn't mean it can't prove engaging to some. That it can stay alive in worlds of apathy, stupidity, and unspeakable violence is no small miracle. Although some would call it a mutant, poetry, even in our times, has a healthy DNA. In its simplest form, prosody classifies the repetitions found in verse, giving them names like meter, alliteration, and quatrain. This is why it is sometimes called the science of versification. The art of versification poses very different questions. For example, how does a rhythm contribute to what a poet is saying? Are the sounds of a poem more than pleasing; are they integral to the poet's thoughts and feelings? Are the white spaces in a poem silences which champion meaning? Are they the presence of a meaningful absence? Do the systems of a poem jar or blend? When read aloud, the best poems have always produced a continuing taste on our tongues. Imagine, then, words without poetic sounds or rhythms, as if they were wooden bowls without a seasoned substance. Or, to change the metaphor, a verse, which reads, like bad prose, a sort of fashionable hovel. Although dullness is a happenstance in all our lives, it is rarely the pulse of good poetry, except, of course, when the ache of lacerating sounds and disjunctive rhythms provide a dissonance for our despair. Poets who write good rhythms have ears, which listen to themselves. One of the most tragic things to occur in the second half of the last century was the death of beauty. It was a death, which blighted everything, including poetry. Disdaining music in verse, some poets went after an in your face kind of content, but after so many shocks, a dullness set in. Now, when almost every poet reads like every other poet, it has become exhausting to be uniquely the same. Yearning for yeast but having a taste for the unleavened, too many poets gag upon anything seasoned. Prosody revels in seasonings. Take the music out of poetry, and there is no prosody. Put on the best prosodic ears; however, and you will discover that the best verse is no rinky-tinky waltz across the page. It is a dance, which matters, and a matter, which dances. And although some of poetry's best readers have one eye for form and another for content, and insights to marry the two, no one can cage poetry in prosodic descriptions. There is no net the protean animal of poetry can't slip through. But as Branko Miljkovic says, "He who doesn't know how to listen to a poem will listen to a storm." Prosody is very deliberate listening. Those who beat up on its elements only succeed in darkening themselves.