His Dead End

I think it was the summer of '77 or '78 that I finally figured out "sprung rhythm." The prosodic invention by English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins started out as an experiment in poetic language, then evolved into a full-blown poetic technique that allowed Hopkins to write some really memorable verse.

The details are outlined in letters that Hopkins wrote to his friend Robert Bridges, who became poet laureate of England. The two shared an interest in "quantitative" prosody, where you count syllables not by stress/unstress, but by "weight" (my term). These letters were reprinted in a paperback of Hopkins' work (by Penguin?) that I bought from a used bookstore in, I think, '75.

I won't spoil the fun for you (if you're just starting the scans I mentioned a few posts ago, you've got a ways to go, anyhow). But, if you're really interested, I suggest you focus first on Milton -- especially the way he handles resolutions across the caesura. (You'll have fun Google-ing that!)

A bit on NPR last week about Hopkins started me recalling all this. The "expert" being interviewed (who was expert on Things Historical about GMH) got it all wrong on the poet's verse technique. He may have gotten it confused with "fourteener" verse, where the unstressed syllables in a line are not counted as strictly (which is why it's often used as lyrics in songs).

For the record: Hopkins did count the unstressed syllables in his lines. It's just for what that matters. (Hint: It made the heavily stressed ones "spring" off the page.)

But, near the end of his short life, Hopkins complained bitterly to Bridges that he'd hit a creative dead end. The self-imposed "rules" to sprung rhythm just grew and grew over time, and they seem to have hemmed him in creatively.

Letting things get too complex can do that. Study the rules of formal verse, for sure -- just be sure to loosen things up when you write.

We're looking for those interstices, remember?