Are You a Stresser or a Timer?

[David Mascellani]

...When, for instance, we listen to poetry read aloud,
or when we read it aloud ourselves, some of us are instinctive "timers," [Footnote: See W. M. Patterson,
The Rhythm of Prose. Columbia University Press, 1916.]
paying primary attention to the spaced or measured
intervals of time, although in so doing we are not
wholly regardless of those points of "stress" which
help to make the time-intervals plainer. Others of us
are natural "stressers," in that we pay primary attention
to the "weight" of words,–the relative loudness or pitch,
by which their meaning or importance is indicated,–
and it is only secondarily that we think of these weighted or "stressed" words as separated from one another by approximately equal intervals of time....

...Musicians, for instance, are apt to be noticeable "timers,"
while many scholars who deal habitually with words in
their varied shifts of meaning, are professionally inclined
to be "stressers."
A Study of Poetry By Bliss Perry
Chapter V RHYTHM AND METRE
www.authorama.com/study-of-poetry-6.html

...The nature of rhythm, and the kind of life it assumes in
poetry, are explained or perceived differently by different readers, and as everything else has multiplied in our time,
so have theories that try to account for the movement of
sound in poems. Stressers and timers, as George Saintsbury called them, have perhaps always been with us, and new perspectives on language and literature - Russian Formalism, structural linguistics, Chomskyan generative theory, New Criticism, free verse, and New Historicism, to mention a few ...
The Passion of Meter: A Study of Wordsworth's Metrical Art.
book reviews Style, Spring, 1997 by George T. Wright
www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2342/is_n1_v31/ai_20572332

...The debates between stressers and timers might also
be viewed as just talking at cross purposes. In general, stressers are more interested in versification; timers are
more interested in rhythm. In the light of these distinctions,
the contributions to verse study by the structural linguists
might also be seen as entirely conjunct with more traditional
approaches to verse.
A Disciplinary Map for Verse Study byRichard D. Cureton
http://depts.washington.edu/versif/backissues/vol1/essays/cureton.html

[cookala]

I haven't read the hyperlinks yet, but my reaction to whats you've posted is that it's really weird, because I'm both, though timing comes more instinctively to me. With free verse, I seem to pick up on a poems cadences but not the stressed words when I write and when I read it. When I write in meter (which hasn't been as often as I should) I find that I concentrate purposely on stress, and forget about rhythm as the beat of the stresses creates the rhythm. But when I read a metrical poem (as oppsoesed to writing one) once again I become a timer.

My question is - how can I be both? is that the norm?

cookala
veeeery interestink

[David Mascellani]

Originally posted by cookala
I haven't read the hyperlinks yet, but my reaction to whats you've posted is that it's really weird, because I'm both, though timing comes more instinctively to me. With free verse, I seem to pick up on a poems cadences but not the stressed words when I write and when I read it. When I write in meter (which hasn't been as often as I should) I find that I concentrate purposely on stress, and forget about rhythm as the beat of the stresses creates the rhythm. But when I read a metrical poem (as oppsoesed to writing one) once again I become a timer.

My question is - how can I be both? is that the norm?

cookala
veeeery interestink

I think so.

'instinctive "timers,"... are not wholly regardless of those points of "stress" which help to make the time-intervals plainer. '

'natural "stressers," ... secondarily ..think of these weighted or "stressed" words as separated from one another by approximately equal intervals of time....'

It is an interesting theory of reading/listening which, perhaps, is
one explanation as to why some readers "get", for example, either the emotional rhythms or the rhetorical stresses of a poem while other readers might not even notice one or the other and end up either being unmoved emotionally or intellectually by the poem.

It might also come in handy to know when you are submitting poetry. Are the editors and his/her readers stressers or a timers?
You'd probably be able to have an educated guess after reading
the editorials, letters to the editor, and the poetry published in
several issues.

David

[cookala]

Originally posted by David Mascellani
It is an interesting theory of reading/listening which, perhaps, is one explanation as to why some readers "get", for example, either the emotional rhythms or the rhetorical stresses of a poem while other readers might not even notice one or the other and end up either being unmoved emotionally or intellectually by the poem.

I've thought about this briefly from time to time and wondered about that myself. I think much of what a reader gets about a poem depends a lot on how closely they read it, and how well they pay attention to the choice of words and turns of phrase. I don't know if rhythm or stress alone, by themselves, would have as much impact as the words themselves. But I can easily understand that rhythm and stress become more powerful when a skillful poet uses them to accentuate the words and turns of phrase he uses.

It might also come in handy to know when you are submitting poetry. Are the editors and his/her readers stressers or a timers?
You'd probably be able to have an educated guess after reading
the editorials, letters to the editor, and the poetry published in
several issues.

David

Excellent point, that, and thanks for sharing it - it's something that hadn't occurred to me, an definitely something I will try to remember when I get to the point of submitting my work to the pubs.