Free Verse, Enjambment, Irony

Abstract

In prose, the lines run from one margin of the page to the other; in poetry, it is the poet who decides where the line ends. Fraser writes about blank verse: ... we might often be uncertain (particularly when the sense is run on from line to line, without pauses at the end of the line) how the lines divide. This is what Dr. Johnson meant when he said that English blank verse is often verse for the eye (29). (1) If this were true, it would apply even more to free verse. Indeed, the surrounding empty space that indicates line endings in printed verse is not available in vocal performance. I claim, however, that just as white spaces break up the series of black marks on the paper into smaller perceptual units whose end may or may not coincide with the end of syntactic units, in aural perception, certain vocal devices may break up the text into versification units, and even indicate conflicts of versification and syntactic units. Indeed, Dr. Johnson does grant what Fraser is tacit on: there are few skilful and happy readers of Milton who enable their audience to perceive where the lines end or begin. In vocal performance, there are other means to indicate line ending: first of all, punctuational pauses; but also intonation contour, and some more elusive cues, such as the lengthening of the last speech sound or syllable, or overarticulation of the word boundaries, e.g., by inserting a stop release or a glottal stop where appropriate. Such cues may act in conjunction--indicating unambiguous continuity or discontinuity; or in conflict--indicating continuity and discontinuity at the same time. In this article, I will explore the possible mismatches between language and versification in poetry. It is a case study of a short piece of free verse, by the great Hebrew poet Yehuda Amichai. [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] 1. Rain in the Battlefield It's raining on the faces of my comrades; On the faces of my comrades, who Cover their heads with the blankets-- And on the faces of my comrades, who Don't cover anymore. The adjectives and dead are restrictive, whereas the who-clauses are nonrestrictive. Consequently, the phrase live already suggests that they are contrasted to some other group of comrades. The nonrestrictive relative clauses, by contrast, though antithetical, merely give some additional information on the two groups of comrades. The parallelism of lines 2 and 4 points up the indifference of the rain as to whether the soldiers are alive or dead. It is their response that makes some difference--but no big difference either: These comrades cover their heads, these comrades don't. This trivial difference stands in opposition to the momentous distinction between life and death; hence its effective irony. The rain and the covering of faces may be construed as an instinctive gesture to cope with the hard circumstances soldiers must face. Looking back, then, from lines 4 and 5, the metonymy for discomfort becomes a metonymy for life and death. For Cleanth Brooks, is not the opposite of an overt statement, but 'a general term for the kind of qualification which the various elements in a context receive from the context' (Wellek 329; Brooks 171). The ironist pretends to know nothing, not even that he is ironical. He merely describes what he sees, with no patent purpose, as it were. Now, suppose Amichai wrote: 2. It's raining on the faces of my comrades; On the faces of my comrades, Who cover their heads with the blankets-- And on the faces of my comrades, Who don't cover anymore. Some readers feel a considerable difference between the two texts. It is as if in Excerpt 1 the irony were subtler than in Excerpt 2. Notice, however, that the semantic and syntactic information are literally identical in the two versions. The difference is generated by the mismatch between syntax and versification. …