headless iamb questions???

[Jeanne G]

I've seen many references to a headless iamb. Though I know what it is, I have no idea how to recognize one for myself. Can't find anything in the blurbs to explain them, so tried to find a pattern to their occurance, such as an article, preposition or maybe even passive verb that is understood but doesn't appear. Nope, that didn't seem to explain them either. Since I don't know how to recognize them I would automatically scan that first foot on the line (since that is the only place they seem to appear, or perhaps are allowed?) as a trochee. Dactyls seem even more rare than headless iambs and I don't know how to recognize them either, I'm assuming they are rarely used anymore, since I don't think I've seen them scanned and isolated in here either. I'll be damned if I've gotten my hands on a poetry book yet that explains this stuff either. Help!!

Thanks in advance,


Jeanne

[HowardM2]

The thread on Standards Substitutions in Strict IP (http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11320) discusses acephalous or headless iambs and gives a couple of examples. I'll hunt up a few more examples and post them here when I get some time (rushed right now).

The thread on basic meter discusses dactylic meter; it's not especially common in English.

[HowardM2]

Here are a few more examples:

Mark Jarman, Unholy Sonnet 13:

Blessedness--not only in a face
/ ^ BLESS/ ed NESS/ not ON/ ly IN/ a FACE/


Hayden Carruth, Sonnets: 2:

Woman, I'm not sure of much. Are you?
/ ^ WO/ man I'M/ not SURE/ of MUCH/ are YOU/


Dana Gioia, "Sunday Night in Santa Rosa":

Wind sweeps ticket stubs along the walk
/ ^ WIND/ sweeps TICK/ et STUBS/ a LONG/ the WALK/

[Jeanne G]

Thanks for the quickie reply. I have read the link you supplied, and while it got me started in knowing the existance of headless iambs, it didn't get specific enough. I look forward to the other links when you have more time. Thanks a bundle.


Jeanne

[Dunc]

As for IT rather than IP, get a copy of Blake's Tyger in front of you and note his ambiguous rhythm x - x - x - x, which often seems trochaic with a catalectic last foot -
x - / x - / x - / x [-]

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

but can also seem or be iambic, starting with an iamb or headless iamb [-] x / - x / - x / - x

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

And, going the other way from headless iambs, you're familiar with the way eg ballad metre can switch without effort from iambs to iambs-with-anapaests to accommodate extra syllables -

Oh have you seen the pistons keen
On the giant CPR
With the driving force of a thousand horse?
Then you know what pistons are.

- x / - x / - x / - x
- - x / - x / x x
- - x / - x / - - x / - x
- - x / - x / - x

Such mixtures are sometimes called logaœdic. Regards / Dunc

[Harry R]

I expect Howard makes this clear in his thread on standard substitutions, but I'll mention it again - starting a line in an iambic piece with a headless iamb is a relatively modern innovation. But I mainly posted to mention a contemporary example (already posted by Howard in a separate context) -

The Thread
by Don Paterson


Jamie made his landing in the world
so hard he ploughed straight back into the earth.
They caught him by the thread of his one breath
and pulled him up. They don't know how it held.
And so today I thank what higher will
brought us to here, to you and me and Russ,
the great twin-engined swaying wingspan of us
roaring down the back of Kirrie Hill

and your two-year-old lungs somehow out-revving
every engine in the universe.
All that trouble just to turn up dead
was all I thought that long week. Now the thread
is holding all of us: look at our tiny house,
son, the white dot of your mother waving.


the relevant lines being 1, 8, 10, 11, 14. Note how it not only allows the writer to use a punchy trochaic start to a line, but also, the headless lines sometimes feel noticeably shorter, particularly when they end on a masculine rhyme.

[Jeanne G]

Thanks Harry, Dunc and Howard,

for your info. I'm still pretty murky on this, so I'll just continue to study scansion and I'm sure in time I'll fully understand all the information you have provided. That has been the case w/ matters in the blurbs that would go way over my head at the first read, but later became clear after I had absorbed the necessary building block information. The use of headless iambs seems to be a subjective thing rather than an absolute. If I am even starting to get it, then a h.i. could (most?) often be scanned as a trochee, but it can't just arbitrarially be inserted to salvage a hopelessly punchy line.

Thanks again,


Jeanne

[Harry R]

Originally posted by Jeanne G
The use of headless iambs seems to be a subjective thing rather than an absolute. If I am even starting to get it, then a h.i. could (most?) often be scanned as a trochee

Sort of but not necessarily. If you have a line like

OxOxOxOxO

it could indeed be described as either tailless trochaic -

OxOxOxOxO(x)

or headless iambic -

(x)OxOxOxOxO

But in the case of, for example the Don Paterson sonnet I posted above, the nine lines which don't start with headless iambs make it clear it's an iambic poem. It makes more sense to describe it as iambic with five headless lines than iambic with five trochaic lines. And of course, there's a difference between starting an iambic line with a headless iamb and starting it with a trochee; a line of IP with an initial trochee wold look like this -

OxxOxOxOxO

In other words, normally when we call something a headless iamb, it's because the context of the rest of the poem leads us to expect an iamb there.

Harry

[Jeanne G]

Thanks again Harry.



Jeanne