ENGLISH 1A03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Syllabic Verse
23 Jun 2018
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Marianne Moore “Poetry” and William Carlos Williams “The Red Wheelbarrows”
Types of Verse
Syllabic verse: form defined by a fixed number of syllables per line, regardless of accent
Accentual verse: form defined by fixed number of accents per line, regardless of number of
syllables
Accentual-syllabic verse: form defined by fixed number of syllables and accents per line;
usually dominated by a particular pattern of specific metrical feet (for example, iambic
pentameter)
Marianne Moore
American poet associated with the American Modernist poetry movement
Collected Poems (1951) won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award
Stanza
A stanza is a section of a poem separated from the others by spacing, and frequently
structured according to a certain set of patterns or rules—there are different types of stanzas
based on number of lines, rhyme scheme, etc
Poetry
“Prosaic” in tone: show text written as prose
What meanings are produced by the breaking of the prose paragraph into stanzas? (A stanza
is a section of a poem separated from the others by spacing, and frequently structured
according to a certain set of patterns or rules—there are different types of stanzas based on
number of lines, rhyme scheme, etc.)
Longer lines at the beginning mimic prose
As the stanza’s lines become shorter, it shows the process of prosaic, everyday language
falling into poetic patterns
Shorter lines allow more qualities of the language to come to our attention:
oAssonance in “hands that can grasp” (short “a”); ○ “eyes / dilate / rise” (long “i”)
oConsonance in “hands / grasp / eyes / rise / must” (“s”: sibilance)
oRhyme of “eyes / rise”—suggestion of awakening; the formal intimacy established by the
rhyme suggests some kind of connection between opening one’s eyes and some kind of
ascent
oThe short lines focus suddenly and intensely on discrete images of a body responding to
something; together, they produce an image of a body coming alive to something, where
grasping, dilating (to take something in), and rising are all part of the same motion or
event—physical sensation is linked to a concept of coming into awareness
“these things are important … because they are useful”: ○ The poem makes an argument for
the usefulness of everyday things ○ Doesn’t say that poetry is useful the same way, or that
poetry is useless, but challenges us to understand where poetry fits into the pantheon of useful
things
oThe use of poetry: it doesn’t make trivial things important, but helps us recognize the
significance of the seemingly insignificant—can enhance forms of meaning that are
normally hidden in plain sight
It performs this function, in the case of this poem, precisely by linking the sensual or
aesthetic quality of images to our ability to appreciate their usefulness: ○ “Hands that can
grasp” both refers to the everyday function of hands, and makes the observation beautiful
through sound devices (assonance and consonance)—it endows it with aesthetic qualities; by
paying attention to those qualities, we also become aware of the profound importance of the
hand’s ability to grasp things
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