Talk:Sprung rhythm

Does this page need a more clearly explained example of sprung rhythm? I know it well (Hopkins is an old favorite of mine) but I suspect that simply supplying a technical description and a poem may not be enough. Any thoughts? Jwrosenzweig 00:51, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The article says 'feet in which the first syllable is stressed' - but this isn't the case with the poem it's talking about, unless I'm being very dense. Just in case I *am*, I haven't changed it, but if you're more confident than me, go sort it out? The Literary Encyclopaedia backs up the 'first syllable of the foot is stressed' point, although the Norton Anthology of English Literature doesn't mention it. It seems that the author is putting unstressed first syllables *outside* of feet - is this common practice?

Cheers --Oolong 09:11, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

The proposed scansion in the example only makes sense if you assume the first syllable is the stressed one; subsequent syllables are de-emphasized, relatively speaking. If I can use CAPS for syllabic emphasis, things might be a little clearer:

GLOry BE to GOD for DAPpled THINGS for SKIES of COUple-COLour as a BRINded COW

I don't understand what you mean by unemphasized syllables being outside of feet; a foot in sprung rhythm is made up of a stressed first syllable followed by an indeterminate number of unstressed syllables, which number can be zero. In that way the rhythm sort of sucks up all de-emphasized syllables as it goes. Does that make sense? Perhaps a truly exceptional poem can help: the first line of Hopkins's untitled kingfisher poem follows:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

In this line, Hopkins breaks his own rule, because it's difficult to imagine he wants "As" to be an emphasized word (particularly if there are emphases on both "draw" and "flame", which is indicated in some editions). I remember a prof of mine comparing this exception to a pickup note at the beginning of a piece of music. So, to use the notation from the article itself (and assuming the emphasis on the two last words in the line is correct), you'd scan the line as follows:

As|kingfishers|catch fire,|dragonflies|draw|flame;

with the fifth foot remaining unclosed to catch the de-emphasized "As" which starts the second line.

If you think it's clearer, I can certainly change the formatting of the feet in the article to the CAPS style (as KINGfishers CATCH fire, DRAgonflies DRAW FLAME), or we can introduce bolds (As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;)...let me know what you're thinking.

Mark

I'm thinking we do need both a somewhat clearer explanation as well as a more emphatic markup. Instead of bold though, how about either italic or that markup we use for showing pronunciation (just the emphasis parts)? GPa Hill (talk) 00:15, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, now that I think of it, what about audio? Is a reading of that first and second line an appropriate use of a short audio clip? GPa Hill (talk) 00:17, 13 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Bold would be clearer, audio would be superb.~ZytheTalk to me! 17:46, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Brittanica (plagiarism?)
This article appears to have been copied directly from an Encyclopedia Brittanica article. hgilbert (talk) 03:08, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you for pointing that out. It was a relatively recent addition, it seems. I have reverted to an earlier version. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:53, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
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Cans someone explain what sprung rhythm is supposed to be, besides Hopkin's term for something we have many other terms for? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.62.113.6 (talk) 07:32, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Scansion
Re the scansion example given, where is this from? Is it original research? The published notes here: describe the poem as paeonic, i.e. based on a metre of 1 long + 3 short syllables (in any order), which suggests it should go
 * Glory be to|God for dappled|things

etc. Ben Finn (talk) 13:04, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

The accent marks on the first version of this poem on the webpage are not the ones that Hopkins actually wrote. He put accent marks on two words: "áll trádes", and on nothing else. At least, this is the way this poem is printed in all the references I have checked (over six of them, including one from Google books in the early 20th century). I think the proposed scansion is wrong in several places and should be deleted as "original research". (Although I wouldn't agree with the paeonic rhythm, either. I'd put six stressed syllables in the fifth and ninth lines, and five in all the others. This may disagree with Hopkins' rules, but it sounds much better that way, and the accent marks don't contradict this reading, the way they do in the first version.) Peterwshor (talk) 23:57, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Actually, looking at it again in light of Ben Finn's comments on paeonic rhythm, it works great with three feet per line: |Glory be to | God for | dappled things — For | ... Although they're not completely regular feet of four syllables, many of them do have four syllables. I now suspect that's what Hopkins intended. Hopkins himself in the introduction to his poetry book says that his paeonic feet are four syllables and have the stress on the first syllable. Peterwshor (talk) 02:18, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

I deleted the "proposed scansion" as original research (and completely inaccurate), and corrected the poem to have only the stress accents that Hopkins himself explicitly put in. I am now sure that Hopkins intended three feet per line in "Pied Beauty", and using that as a guideline, I see only one possible ambiguity (whether to put the stress on fresh or "fire"in "fresh-firecoal", and it doesn't really matter except when using it as an example of sprung rhythm, since both alternatives sound fine). It might be better to use "Spring or Fall" (Margaret, are you grieving ...) as an example, because Hopkins put more stress accents in that,there's no ambiguity about where to put the remaining ones, and there has been considerably more analysis of that poem. Peterwshor (talk) 14:11, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

First of all: it's great to see this page get some attention, thanks so much both for the "paeonic" observation and the resultant observation about three feet in the line. The trouble that we're currently in is the same as when I first visited the page: someone without pre-existing knowledge of what sprung rhythm is isn't helped at all by the example poem. One goal of the example should be to demonstrate that sprung rhythm differs from free verse in that it contains a consistent number of feet per line. "Pied Beauty" is a poor example of that trait because it's very hard to make some lines of the poem fit that pattern. One major ambiguity is exactly the emphases that Hopkins did mark, as observed above: in line six, there's no way to have two of the three feet be those two words and have everything else reasonably fit. (I wonder if it's meant to be an inverted precursor of the last two lines: "áll trádes" against "Praise Him", and so line six should be considered as having five feet.) I also think lines 3, 5, and 7 all sound better and transmit their meaning more clearly with four feet per line as opposed to three. And even if there are possible ways to slice those problematic lines so they fit into the paeonic/three-foot schema, there's no indication of those slicings given to the reader of this page.

Consequently, I think changing over to "Spring and Fall" as an example is a great suggestion. I think, however, the challenge still remains to show the reader somehow what Hopkins intended its (simpler, more "correctly-sprung") scansion to look like. And it's a tricky area wrt original research: to those familiar with sprung rhythm and Hopkins's work, there's no need to perform this exercise, because Hopkins's intention is clear (or clear-ish; I find line 9 ambiguous), so finding a work where someone has broken down the scansion is hard. But if we're looking for audio, this obvious and well-produced reading of "Spring and Fall" isn't particularly demonstrative of sprung rhythm either: several of Hopkins's emphases aren't emphasized (e.g. "ás" in line 5, "wíll" in line 9.)

Thoughts? Peterwshor, are you aware of works that propose where the remaining emphases for "Spring and Fall" land? NewlandArcher (talk) 06:13, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

There's a scansion somewhere online for "The Windhover". I don't have any time right now, but I'll try to find it and edit the article when I have time, probably in a few weeks. Peterwshor (talk) 18:00, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

I added the scansion. If I can think of something useful to say, I'll add a few more sentences about sprung rhythm at some point. Let me add that I'm not at all sure now that there should be three feet per line in **Pied Beauty**. The first four lines sound great with three feet per line, but as Newland Archer says, some of the later lines are troublesome. And Hopkins doesn't seem to have any other poems with this many unstressed syllables that would be stressed in ordinary English. On the other hand, line 9 doesn't seem to work at all with five feet per line. Maybe Hopkins broke his own rules in **Pied Beauty**. Peterwshor (talk) 15:47, 5 May 2018 (UTC)