Comments on: Trochees: An African American Tradition

By: Colin Ward

Colin Ward — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 19:18:43 +0000

Annie,

Lines begin with a strong beat for a reason.

Agreed. They also end with a strong beat for a reason. So stipulated. The issue is what that reason is.

Let me try a different tack. Can a 24-line poem comprised of 6 lines of perfect iambic tetrameter, 18 unresolved 7-syllable lines (as we see in Cullin’s and Brook’s poems) and not a single line of trochee ever be considered anything but iambic tetrameter?

-o-

By: Annie Finch

Annie Finch — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:57:03 +0000

Welcome Dr Max,
I spent about an hour trying to get an mp3 of Cullen reading Heritage in a form that I could post on this blog so people could listen to it right here. No luck there, but here’s the link –and thanks for reminding me, because I wanted to do this!

http://cecily.vox.com/library/audio/tags/countee+cullen/

–Annie

By: Dr. Max

Dr. Max — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:54:52 +0000

Oh, thank you, my friends for learnin’ me how I sing. Why I sing? No concern of yours, I fear. When? Oh, well, I’m sure you’re tired busy. Those that can’t do, beseech–isn’t that it? Don’t fret–I hear they have a new computer program that scans poetry–so so soon you all can take a break and go figure out why jazz sounds pretty. By the way, did any of the fine folks here at the podium bother to hear to listen to ear out Mr. Cullen? That is–listen to the man read? No? Sorry, I know, you’re busy–scanning… but don’t worry, there’s this computer program that’s coming that will replace your fingers and then you all will have time to read, to really read poetry, to read a poem by Countee Cullen and think–why? Thanks.

By: Camille Dungy

Camille Dungy — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:45:09 +0000

Annie, I’m glad you mention Hiawatha. Cullen, like most of his contemporaries, would have known Longfellow’s work very well.

By: Annie Finch

Annie Finch — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:32:42 +0000

Well put, Camille, and thanks for clarifying what I’m sure Ann meant to imply: “Perhaps Cullen also heard something else, but that doesn’t prevent him from mastering iambic meter as well.”

Of course, most (all?) of Cullen’s other poetry is written in iambic meter, and he was an accomplished artist of meter. The fact that this significant poem about his African heritage is written in trochees is no coincidence; just as Longfellow did when he chose trochees for Hiawatha (in which case the trochees evoked traditional Finnish oral poetry), Cullen seems to have meant to imply a whole non-English poetic tradition by his choice of trochaic meter for this poem. And of course, he couldn’t have pulled it off so skillfully if he were not already totally in control of the prosody of the Anglo-American poetic tradition.

By: Mary Meriam

Mary Meriam — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:51:29 +0000

I did some research on African poems/songs back in 2003, but can’t find my notes. Googling around I found this in a book called The power of Black music:

“Game and social songs were metrically regular, made use of simple additive rhythms, and employed repetitive pentatonic melodic constructions, with accents on the off beat. And there are similarities between African and African-American game songs and children’s songs.”

“the pre-existing repertoire of drum patterns used by master drummers in many African cultures is based on musical patterns derived from selected genres of oral poetry.”

By: Camille Dungy

Camille Dungy — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:05:44 +0000

Anne Michael, you ask “why must it follow that a poet of Cullen’s background, an African-American, would necessarily be “hearing” iambic meters in English?”

Why wouldn’t he? Countee Cullen, who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from NYU and went on to attend Harvard, wrote sonnets in the styles of Keats, Shakespeare, and Spenser (as in Sir Edmund of England). In these styles and others he created his own complex and compelling fusions of sound, language, subject, and form. Cullen was intimately familiar with and accomplished at reading, hearing, and executing metrical verse within the parameters of the Anglo/American poetic traditions. Ditto Gwendolyn Brooks. The list of African American poets writing within the Anglo/American poetic tradition and also making a space for their own particular ear and experience within those confines is long and esteemed. Perhaps Cullen also heard something else, but that doesn’t prevent him from mastering iambic meter as well.

–Camille Dungy

By: Jason Guriel

Jason Guriel — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:31:03 +0000

Fascinating post, Annie! And well-timed, for me, anyway. (I was teaching “The Tyger” last week.)

By: Annie Finch

Annie Finch — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:57:04 +0000

Ann, that’s a really interesting perspective. I’ve heard jazz rhythms in free verse attributed to the influence of African American culture, but I’ve never seen such a direct connection suggested between African poetics and African American prosody.
Maybe someone with expertise in the field will weigh in on this.

Lines begin with a strong beat for a reason. Exactly.

By: thomas brady

thomas brady — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:32:29 +0000

“Clipped or acephalous lines begin with a strong beat for a reason: they are meant to be read as pentameter minus a beginning syllable; if we don’t read them that way, the only alternative is to read them as clunky tetrameter lines with an extra syllable!”

Michael,

If you will allow me to simplify the above:

Lines begin with a strong beat for a reason.

Stop there. You don’t need to go any further. This is superfluous: “they are meant to be read as pentameter minus a beginning syllable; if we don’t read them that way…”

No, no, no.

Read “The Rationale of Verse” by Edgar Allan Poe.

I wouldn’t be so vehemently pedantic on this point, except that I do think your kind of rhetoric scares off those who might otherwise find pleasure in verse.

Thomas