All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing

by Steele, Timothy

• ISBN13: 9780821412596
• ISBN10: 0821412590
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-05-01
• Publisher: Ohio Univ Pr

Summary

Perfect for the general reader of poetry, students and teachers of literature, and aspiring poets, All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing is a lively and comprehensive study of versification by one of our best contemporary practitioners of traditional poetic forms. Emphasizing both the coherence and the diversity of English metrical practice from Chaucer's time to ours, Timothy Steele explains how poets harmonize the fixed units of meter with the variable flow of idiomatic speech. He examines the ways in which poets have used meter, rhyme, and stanza to communicate and enhance meaning. Steele illuminates as well many practical, theoretical, and historical issues in English prosody, without ever losing sight of the fundamental pleasures, beauties, and insights that fine poems offer us. Written lucidly, with a generous selection of helpful scansions and explanations of the metrical effects of the great poets of the English language, All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing is not only a valuable handbook on technique; it is also a wide-ranging study of English verse and a mine of entertaining information for anyone wishing more fully to write, enjoy, understand, or teach poetry.

Author Biography

Timothy Steele is Professor of English at California State University, Los Angeles. He is the author of Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt against Meter. His collections of poetry include The Color Wheel and Sapphics and Uncertainties: Poems 1970-1986.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(26)
Part One: Iambic Verse
Metrical Norm and Rhythmical Modulation	27	(25)
Scansion and Metrical Variation	52	(42)
Principles of Scansion	52	(2)
The Principal Iambic Meters	54	(7)
The Three Common Metrical Variations in Iambic Verse: The Trochaic Substitution in the First Foot, the Mid-line Trochaic Substitution, and the Feminine Ending	61	(13)
Less Common Trochaic Substitutions and Trochees That Maybe Are Not Trochees	74	(5)
Loose Iambic---Iambic Verse with Anapestic Substitutions	79	(5)
Other Variants: Divided Lines, Clipped Lines, Broken-Backed Lines, and Feminine Caesuras	84	(10)
Additional Sources of Rhythmical Modulation, Including Enjambment, Caesural Pause, and Word Length	94	(22)
The Story of Elision, Including the Famous Rise, Troublesome Reign, and Tragical Fall of the Metrical Apostrophe	116	(35)
The Practice and Conventions of Elision	116	(18)
Elision and Changing Views about Syllable Count	134	(10)
How Real Is Elision? And What Are We, Finally, to Think of It?	144	(7)
Boundless Wealth from a Finite Store: Meter and Grammar	151	(24)
Part Two: Other Matters, Other Meters
Rhyme	175	(25)
The Background and History of Rhyme	175	(10)
The Two Common Types of Rhyme in English---Full and Partial---and some of Their Varieties	185	(8)
The Use of Rhyme	193	(7)
Stanzas	200	(21)
Trochaic and Trisyllabic Meters	221	(25)
Alternative Modes of Versification in English	246	(35)
Accentual Verse	246	(10)
Syllabic Verse	256	(4)
Free Verse	260	(5)
Imitation-Classical Verse	265	(16)
Notes	281	(26)
Glossary	307	(32)
Bibliography	339	(10)
Permissions and Copyrights	349	(2)
Index	351