07 February 2011

A Concise Apologia for Syllabic Prose as a legitimate form of Poetic Verse

Syllabic verse continues to generate controversy even though it has been an accepted form of poetry for more than a century. While some may dispute the nature and extent of its acceptance, the fact that a British poet laureate championed the style suggests it cannot be dismissed as mere doggerel.


This author continues to find it both ironic and amazing that some of the sloppiest and most rambling forms of free verse are reckoned as profound, authentic and artistic poetry and yet if someone writes rhyming verse based on syllables as opposed to iambic beats, their work is decried as lacking form, void of scansion, pseudo-poetic and unworthy of being deemed as verse.
This is despite the fact that many examples of Continental and Asian speech have poetry based on syllable counts and that English perhaps more than other tongues is an ever-changing language. In fact what is modern English, but a hybrid and dynamic global dialect? It is well attested that English versification was itself a synthesis between continental syllabic form and the accentual metre handed down from the Anglo-Saxons. Are we still bound by a Norman aesthetic? One would think such pseudo-sacred sensibilities would have been challenged centuries ago if not by moderns, then by the intellectual and artistic propensities of religious nonconformists in the era subsequent to Milton.
Was his generation not at the cutting edge of a challenge to doctrinal and cultural orthodoxy? Why did they feel the need to retain the Late Medieval aesthetic born of the Conquest? If Robert Bridges was right, then Milton indeed championed a form which was not revived until the 19th and 20th centuries, the very syllabic form being advocated in this essay.
Syllabic poetry is admittedly modern and is suited to the cultural and artistic shifts which took place in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Industrial Revolution, the demise of Christendom and the disintegration of Western Philosophy have all played their part in the shaping of both art and language. Philosophy must be particularly appealed to. As the intellectual battle raged between modernity and romanticism, between realism and idealism, language itself so often became the subject of debate and the focus of epistemological struggle. Poetry, a realm of ideas and expression is ultimately a question of aesthetics. Art, beauty and communication are all questions that hark back to philosophical inquiry and debate.
To retain and insist upon older forms of structure is not only a commitment to a type of pseudo-romanticism but it is to ignore the necessary and even desirable corrective and reaction to some of the most extreme forms of both avant-garde and artistic nihilism. Just as Jackson Pollock must be understood in his context, the most unrestricted and unrefrained forms of free verse must also be comprehended. While these forms of artistic expression and communication are bound to continue, and perhaps rightly so, a reaction to them, even an alternative is appropriate. The reaction need not be an absolute rejection or a call for a full return to or commitment to past rules and forms. Indeed we see such trends in the realm of philosophy as one considers the various hybridised forms of thought that emerged from philosophical debates rooted in subjective vs. objective attempts to describe and explain reality. Synthesis is (all would admit) a natural process in the realm of human experience and expression. Sometimes synthesis generates new forms and expressions which so transcend the old order as to become incompatible with previous norms and expectations.
Must poetry be constrained between two choices? Are the only aesthetic options that of Aquinas and Derrida?
It could be argued that some of the most satisfying if yet incomplete forms of philosophical discourse are able to draw from both analytic and continental traditions and develop a means of functioning within both realities, drawing from their strengths even while dispensing with their weaknesses, the shortcomings that all too often result from rigid and even dogmatic adherence to certain epistemological or metaphysical commitments.
In terms of verse, Syllabic prose returns something of a form to poetry and yet in a most modern fashion dispenses with centuries of subjective and even arbitrary rules and delineations.
It can be described as a liberating structure as opposed to the meandering and chaotic abuses of free verse as well as the rigid and subjective mathematic formulae of traditional English verse.
Traditional metre is subjective because tone emphasis is occasional and contextual. The written word, (let alone the spoken) cannot be reduced to such a system. This is the ultimate falsity in the presuppositions of traditional verse. While claiming to be adhering to a systemic order it is in fact subjective and in terms of language, limiting and restrictive. At times beautiful to be sure but if the form is meant to reflect a reality regarding the nature of English speech, such an assertion is not above challenge. If a defense rooted in aesthetics is mounted, let the apologist beware for apart from a subjective appeal to a metaphysical ideal, such an argument will quickly collapse. And even when the ideal is appealed to, once again we must ask, why is the Norman synthesis the unchangeable and universal norm for the language? The question itself collapses.
With regard to the perils of system adherence, syllabic verse (it could be countered) is also subject to mathematic reduction being based on counting sounds. However enumerating syllables if it is indeed mathematic is no less (or more) arbitrary or subjective than metre. The rhythms of the English language are far from static. Inflection and emphasis vary by class, region and continent. English is spoken one way in the north of England, another way in India, and yet in other forms in places like Canada and Texas. For that matter without effort the author can think of a dozen words pronounced and emphasised with different inflection between Western Pennsylvania and Western New York. Developing an objective formula for determining stressed and unstressed syllables breaks down if regional dialects are granted validity. For that matter it could be easily argued that speech cannot be reduced to a simple combination of stressed and unstressed feet.
Is not traditional metre rooted in the pedantic snobbery of so-called 'proper or Received English'? Does the south of England lay claim to the only correct form and pronunciation of the language?
By eliminating the largely subjective form of beat and metre the poet is free to express an idea and also allow for a certain ambiguity to exist in how the poem is heard. It leaves open possibilities in tone and emphasis. While communication depends on clarity and is best when direct, the aesthetic and reflective nature of poetry functions better and is more philosophically rich when it is able to rest in idea over strict form, symbol over metre and in a developmental  and reflective potential rooted in the ambiguity and the subjective experience of the reader.
Does this not remove poetry from the grip of the academy? Syllabic poetry has the potential to bridge the hallowed haunts of the scholar and the confused grittiness of the man on the street. Obviously free verse can make a similar appeal; perhaps an even more poignant argument for accessibility to the non-initiated. Yet, with a total lack of form, free verse consistently falls prey to intellectual fad and ideal and though on the one hand its form fits the mixed crowd of a coffee shop on a Saturday night, its value quickly succumbs to the whims and sensibilities of the avant-garde and their proxies within the academy.
What sort of free verse will be published, that which is good poetry, or simply what is relevant? Free verse because it has no form quickly becomes a proxy for other philosophical forms and expressions.
Syllabic poetry like any form of art can also fall into such a trap but I would argue it has the potential to eschew such pitfalls. It is free without being chaotic. It is ordered and thus (to a degree) protected from the shock tactics, radical and extreme innovative tendencies of free verse.
Does it run the risk of slipping into doggerel? Even iambic pentameter can produce bad poetry. Form can degenerate into mere rules. Form cannot save verse from badly conceived and communicated ideas. Yes, mere syllabic construction can fall into the doggerel trap and yet when one considers the most famous and even notorious examples of dilettante composition, one finds that syllabic form and structure apart from ill-conceived rhymes is usually absent. Syllabic poetry is not doggerel. The Syllabic poet is labouring to produce a form that may or may not include a rigid rhyme scheme. Syllabic form can still generate musicality, word-play and generate a fine turn of phrase and yet also retains the freedom appropriate to global English in a post 19th century setting.
Like the Symbolists, Imagists and other Modernist movements, the Syllabic form allows the ideal, the mystical, the spiritual and the dystopian reflection to exist in a form not tied to the Renaissance or Pre-Enlightenment Europe. And yet retaining form can still connect with the archaic and the classical in a way unrestricted free verse simply cannot.
Syllabic versification, especially when combined with some of the late and even disintegrating movements associated with Modernism actually rescues poetry from the chaos of late 20th century forms and the confusion that has developed in the wake of post-modernism and its various manifestations.
Syllabic poetry it could be argued bridges the gap between the failures of Modernism and Postmodernism. It produces the type of poetry which should have resulted from the postmodernist challenge. The myths of Modernism and Enlightenment are rightly shattered but nihilistic forms of thought and expression are not the only path forward.
Syllabic verse is not at present a popular form of poetry and submissions of this form to mainstream publications are likely to be rejected. This question needs to be reconsidered and syllabic verse should be embraced by the artistic community if not the academy. In fact a return to form, even if broad and relatively free is long overdue.
Marianne Moore argued that a form cannot produce good poetry. A form does not a good poem make. She along with others argued that poetry is about skill, honesty or what today would usually be termed authenticity.
These concepts while valid must be explored. They can easily become vacant and devoid of meaning. Of course to explore these terms one must resort to philosophical inquiry. Probing these issues one realises just how shaky the traditional foundations are.
What is a good form for poetry? 
Indeed that's a fine place to start. Poetry should have form, but just what is a form? Is it something real? Is it reflective of something mathematical? Is it based on consensus? Is it therefore subjective?
What is good? How is that defined? A simple question to be sure but it is one that probes the depths of human inquiry, and is in probability a question man in and of himself cannot fully answer.
Is 'good' in terms of the arts a concept wedded to authenticity of experience, feelings, ideas, empirical data or religious truth? Depending on the context any of these are valid (or invalid) to a certain extent. To answer this question of what is good and therefore what is good poetry one must entertain and embrace a wide arena of questions that transcend the doctrinaire concerns of an arbitrary and subjective metre enforced by would-be cultural gatekeepers.
Is poetry the province of academics who merely wish to validate their credentials? Are they elitists defending the status quo? Are they revolutionaries? Clamouring in their claims to the leadership of the avant-garde have they turned into bureaucrats? While art for art's sake is a debatable concept, the notion that poetry, so often a tool of the cultural vanguard would be subject to the parameters of academic bureaucracy and the in-fighting of the literati and cultural elites marks a sad state of affairs, a decadence not artistic but cultural. We should not let the definitions of verse rest in the hands of schizophrenics who waver between the prejudices of the bourgeoisie and the desire to be the leaders and innovators of the avant-garde. While all self-respecting art aficionados and connoisseurs find the commercialisation of art to be repulsive, is not overt political and self-serving vanguardism equally so? Both roads lead back to the same polluted sources and motivations.

Syllabic verse is an appropriate and potentially vibrant form of poetry for our day. It bridges the gap between classical and modern forms and yet is equally capable of transcending them. It offers a form that is compatible with a variety of aesthetic sensibilities and yet avoids the pitfalls of both ill-conceived tradition and the wanton self-serving chaos of a nihilistic avant-garde. Its hour has come. Opposition from the academy is inevitable but what is needed at present is for literary editors to grasp the issue, embrace the form and publish boldly.