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Certain Aspects of Prosody in the Poetry of Robert Lowell

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Certain Aspects of Prosody in the Poetry of Robert Lowell Certain aspects of prosody in the poetry of Robert Lowell Item Type text; Thesis-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Lamont, Thomas Aquinas, 1938- Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 24/09/2021 20:43:20 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/318021 CERTAIN ASPECTS OF PROSODY IN THE POETRY OF ROBERT LOWELL by Thomas A, Lamont A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS In the Graduate College UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This thesis has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in The University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library* Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable without special permission^ provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in their judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship . In all other instances? however^ permission must be obtained from the author* SIGNED 2 APPROVAL BY THESIS DIRECTOR This thesis has been approved on the date shown below; SO Ap !%3 BARN )S Date Assistant Professor of English ACKNOWLEDGMENT The writer is greatly indebted to Dr, Barney Childs for his helpful criticism# suggestions# and a d v ice» ABSTRACT The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the prosody in the poetry of Robert Lowell in order to understand better the evolution of a free-verse form from a traditional form „ The study does not attempt to draw any conclusions from the relation between these two techniques, but merely to show the different aspects of development, English prosody has always been a controversial subject. An attempt has been made in this paper to avoid the more tenuous areas of prosodic scholarship and to establish what appears to be the most adequate prosodic viewpoint. This policy has resulted in the arbitrary choice of some prosodic approaches, perhaps at the expense of others expounded by reputable poets and scholars* Such limitation is unavoidable in a paper of this length. The work of Robert Lowell was chosen as a subject for several reasons. He is recognized as a leading poet today and in a relatively short period of time has moved from a traditional form to one that is free. The quantity of his verse is sufficient enough to establish broad movements in technique. iii In this paper, four of his volumes of poetry will be analyzed from the standpoint of metrics» Patterns of sound and imagery will be dealt with when they contribute to an under­ standing of the prosodic development» iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT BY AUTHOR. „ . „ » * . » ^ * * i ACKNOWLEDGMENT * * . * * * . * . « , . ii ABSTRACT @ * D « q .c o »- « * @ * * * □ « » □ » □ 111 Chapter INTRODUCTION . , «, ... , . I I.or PROSODY f » * * * * * « » -»■ * 4 # » * 4 II. THEME AND STRUCTURE . *. » * , 18 III, THE MOVEMENT OF THE LINE * e * 29 IV, EARLY AND LATE POETRY (2 parts) , , 39 V, PATTERNS OF SOUND , „ , * » * , , , 63 VI. LIFE STUDIES. » * * * 79 BIBLIOGRAPHY * , * , , , , ,, , , , * , 93 v Introduction Between 1944 and 1960 Robert Lowell has written four volumes of poetry! Land of Unlike ness , Lord Wearv's C astleThe Mill of the Kavanauahs, and Life Studies, The quality of the poetry and the quality of the style have established him as one of the major poets writing today. When Land of Unlikeness appeared in 1944, R, P. Blackmur said that Robert Lowell's verse was a " beautiful case of citation in any argument in support of the belief in the formal inextricability of the various elements of 1 poetry.. " The other reviews followed the same pattern: the poetry was excellent , but the tone and style was violent. As Allen Tate said in the introduction: There is no other poetry today quite like this. T. S. Eliot's recent prediction that we should soon see a return to formal and even intricate metres and stanzas was com­ ing true, before he made it, in the verse of Robert Lowell . 2 When Robert Lowell's second volume. Lord Wearv's Castle, appeared in 1946, it was given such critical acclaim that the poet received an appointment as a 1 "Notes on Eleven Poets, " Kenvon Review> VII (1945) , p. 348 . 2 "Introduction." Land of Unlikeness (n.p.i 1944). Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress/ a Guggen­ heim Fellowship, and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Randall Jarrell said: Many of the people who reviewed Lord Weary1 s Castle felt that it was as much of an event as Auden's first book; I can think of no one younger than Auden who has written better poetry than Robert Lowell* s . Anyone who reads contemporary poetry will read it.,» . 3 In 1949 Robert Lowell published Poems 1938-1949 . All the new work was to appear later in The Mills of the Kavanauahs. and the old work was taken from his two earlier volumes. This volume won him national acclaim and he received '^recognition - 4 as a leader of the younger generation of poets . .. " When The Mills of the Kavanauahs was published in 1951, William Carlos Williams said that its six poems were 5 "first-rate. Life Studies was published in 1959; it won the National Book Award for #petry in 1960 * In the same year Robert Lowell received a grant from the Ford Foundation and was named the Boston Arts Festival Poet. Because of this volume's peculiar style/ so abrupt a change from what had preceded it. 3 "Robert Lowell's Poetry, " in Mid-Centurv American Poets, ed., John Ciardi, p. 158. 4 Hugh B. Staples/ Robert Lowells The First Twenty Years (London: 19 62) / p . 11. 5 Selected Essavs, (New York: 1954), pp. 324-325. the reviews were mixed! 11. , .it is honest and clear, with little attempt at any rhetoric but the simplest; it risks ^ and 6 sometimes falls into - flatness. " Still , Alfred Kazin called 7 it a "remarkable book.11 The availability of the poetry of Robert Lowell for prosodic analysis is based on his acknowledged reputation as one of the most gifted poets writing today. A further reason., one perhaps more important, is the study of a dis­ tinct change in style by a poet so noted» The first volume Of Robert Lowell's poetry was violently rhetorical and formal. The last is free verse, In view of the constant opposition between the promoters of free verse and their opponents, a study in a poet who has gone from one of the extremes to the other will be an essential key to the understanding of any formal or free verse. The following analysis of Robert Lowell' s poetry does not broach the subject of meaning in any depth. Because there are so many individual poems and because an adequate study of meaning in the poems is outside the scope of this paper, the general outlines of meaning will be touched only when they relate to the prosodic analysis . 6 Thom Gunn, "Excellencies and Variety," The Yale Review, XLIV (I960), p. 304. 7 Contemporaries (Boston: 1962), p. 226. Most arts attain their effect by a fixed element and a variable . From, the empiric angle: verse usually has some element roughly fixed and some other that varies/ but which element is to be fixed and which vary,,, and to what degree, is the affair of; the author. 1 Ezra Pound/ ABC of Reading I Prosody A poet decides the length of his lines, whether they shall be uniform/ varied to patternf or capriciously irregular; he must pronounce upon rhyme > and/ if he accepts it/ before the end of a suitable number of lines fix its scheme. The result of all these variables and more will be considered laws in some particular poet's prosody, and the tabulation of just such laws is then the work c£." the prosodist. Ideally , then, the prosodist merely analyzes what is there before him, and the difficulties or mistakes he can make as a prosodist will be in relation to how well he hears; but such ideal situations rarely exist in English prosody. The prosodist finds himself choosing between at least two fundamental approaches, the temporal and the traditional; and, further, he has to decide between two different systems of notation used to record the line of verse, the two stress levels of the traditional and the four stress levels of the lin g u ists. 1 (London: 1934), p. 5. The prosodist is concerned with verse, which comes from the Latin versus > "a turning around as of the plough at the end of the furrow , and thus it meant also a furrow, a row, a line of 2 writing.11 The physical basis of this line of verse is the Syllable, to which the linguists have given the operational 3 definition "the domain of any stress level." As such, it may contain a single vowel, a diphthong, or either one of these, together with surrounding consonants. The various types of prosody can be classified according to their different approaches to the syllable, and since the syllable is the basis of the line of poetry, these theories will differ radically in their interpre­ tation of the line , The discussion of English meter has been dominated by two theories of metrics which are divided over just what type of measure determines the line: Probably the most disputed point in all prosodic theory is the relative importance of time (duration) syllabic length, and stress (acceni) in English verse.
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