CHAT: poetry, particularly three rings (was Re: Intergermansk - Three Rings)

On 29 Jan 2005, at 2.02 am, Mark J. Reed wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 28, 2005 at 11:34:06AM +1100, Tristan McLeay wrote:
>> I never noticed the rhyme in the original, I'm sure it's no great
>> loss.
>> (I've never thought of it as particularly great verse.)
>
> Maybe that's because you didn't notice the rhyme. :)  Okay, it's not
> *great* verse, but I quite like it.  And I wouldn't if it didn't rhyme;
> IMO, verse ain't verse if it don't rhyme - free verse is neither. :)
I think rhythm is much more important than rhyme to good poetry. For
instance, in the second half of this poem, the rhythm is quite strong
and regular and the verse is good and strong, but there is no rhyming*
at all (excepting the last repeated line, which is really ugly because
it's got an irregular stress compared to the rest of the stanza(?),
very much belonging to the first one).

* Calling repeating the same word twice 'rhyming' is such a foreign
concept to me. I understand it's perfectly legitimate in French, but I
don't think of it as rhyming. If one of the two pairs rhymed and the
other repeated, I might either not notice that there was trying to be
two rhyming pairs, or I might think much more ill of it. The repetition
here is good though.

The first stanza (assuming I remember my yr 7 english correctly),
however, is a mish mash all over the place. Some lines (particularly
'Nine for mortal Men, doomed to die') are quite effective on their own,
but what makes them effective isn't brought through to the rest. It
alternates between too many kinds of stress, the length of the lines is
inconsistent. If you hadn't pointed out the rhyme, I would've
considered it free verse, urgh. (I don't think verse needs to rhyme,
but it needs a structure, and it needs it to be kept consistently.) Oh,
and the two stanza's only connection is the ugly final line. We need
some inter-stanza consistency of what makes it poetry as well as just
intra-stanza.

However, perhaps the problem is just that to get the stress you
proclaim it has, it needs to be read unnaturally. See below for how
I've always read it (I don't know what the names of the stresses are
though). But I find your stressings, when they differ significantly
from mine, to be even worse aesthetically, because they stress the
*wrong* syllables---good poetry needs to work natural language into an
artform, not abuse it. BTW, the 'your' here and suchlike mean not 'you
made them up', but 'you introduced them to me'. I don't mean to say
that yours might be incorrect, *I* simply don't know what was intended.

But I haven't studied poetry, formally or informally, so this is just
based on my naive intuitions. Which are still worth something I'm sure
:) No... I like good poetry when I hear it---but this ain't it.

> I like the rhythm as well:
>
> /     /     ^   ^   / ^   ^     / ^   ^   /
either that or:
   /    /     ^   ^   / ^   /     / ^   ^   /
> Three rings for the Elven-kings under the sky           dactylic
> pentameter A
>
> / (^)  ^   ^  /     ^     ^  /     ^     ^  /
   /  ^  ^   ^  /     /     ^  ^     /     ^  /
> Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone       dactylic
> tetrameter B
>
> /    ^   /  ^   /    /      ^  /
ditto
> Nine for mortal Men, doomed to die                      trochaic
> pentameter A
>
> /   ^   ^   /    ^    ^  /   ^    /
   /   ^   ^  /    /    /  ^   /    /
> One for the Dark Lord on his Dark Throne                dactylic
> tetrameter B
>
>
> /  ^   /     ^ /  ^   /     ^    /  ^   /
this is perhaps the only one I find better than how I'd been reading
it, which was:
   ^  ^   /    ^  /   ^  ^     ^   /  ^    /
(as two half lines of: ^^/^/ with a linker of ^)
I think your form has more repeatability, but it's overly bouncy... the
most aesthetic form would be a merger of the two:
   ^   ^  /    ^  /  ^   /     ^    /  ^   /
again, as two half lines. With what I believe are called caesura
(pauses) between the half-lines in all cases.
> In the land of Mordor where the shadows lie             trochaic
> hexameter A
(ditto for everything below)

> /   /    ^  /    ^    /
> One Ring to rule them all                       trochaic tetrameter C
>
> /    /   ^  /    ^
> One Ring to find them                           trochaic trimeter D
>
> /   /    ^  /     ^    /
> One Ring to bring them all                      trochaic tetrameter C
>
> ^   /  ^   /   ^    /    ^
> And in the darkness bind them                   trochaic trimeter D
(I personally think this line is improved by an unstressed 'to' before
'bind', as:
   ^   /  ^   /   ^    ^  /    ^
   And in the darkness to bind them
but it's nice either way.)
>
> /  ^   /    ^  /  ^   /     ^   /  ^    /
> In the land of Mordor where the shadows lie.    trochaice hexameter A
--
Tristan.

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