VERSIFICATION’ AND ‘POETIC SYNTAX’
(b) POETIC SYNTAX
MARGARET FERGUSON
From: The Norton Anthology of Poetry (pp. 2053-2065)
Nalini Prabhakar
In the previous lesson on Versification, we have seen how poetry is different from all other forms of
writing, primarily because it employs verse. We have also tried to understand the basic principles
underlying the writing of verse such as rhythm, meter, rhyme, and the basic forms of poetry. In this
lesson we will look into another important aspect of poetry which is poetic syntax. We shall
summarize the major contentions made by Margaret Ferguson in the essay, ‘Poetic Syntax’, The
Norton Anthology of Poetry (2005)
Ferguson begins the essay with the following sentence from Alexander Pope's “The Rape of
the Lock” (p. 619): “Gainst Pallas, Mars; Latona, Hermes arms.”, the meaning of which, according to
her is not immediately available even to native English speakers. Pope uses a traditional grammatical
pattern with a Greek name—zeugma—to describe a scene from Homer's Iliad in which two pairs of
Greek gods are equipping themselves to battle one another. This line paraphrased will be - Mars
[arms] against Pallas; Hermes [arms] against Latona. When one verb controls numerous parallel
words or sentences, this is known as Zeugma. Pope uses a pattern that some of his English-speaking
readers could have recognised, but not all of them, to create a tightly compressed line that slows down
any reader and makes it difficult to understand. Pope manages to create a language analogy of the
fictitious war scenario, and he does this through using syntax to convey concepts as well as to produce
certain dramatic and significant effects through the arrangement of his lines. This example clearly
illustrates that poetic syntax is the manner in which the poet arranges words and lines in a poem in
order to create a desired effect.
The Greek words syn (together) and tax (to arrange) are the roots of the English word syntax,
which means “orderly or systematic arrangements of components or pieces.” These
components, at their most basic level, consist of symbols, including mathematical ones, that
are put together to form propositions or assertions. Words and groupings of words are the
symbols that matter most for poetic syntax, although punctuation, line shapes, stanza forms,
metrical systems, and rhyme schemes are all crucial for understanding poetic syntax as a way
to organise words to create meaningful assertions.
Check Your Progress
1. Explain Zeugma with example.
2. What is poetic syntax
SYNTAX
The Greek words syn (together) and tax (to arrange) are the roots of the English word syntax,
which means “orderly or systematic arrangements of components or pieces.” These
components, at their most basic level, consist of symbols, including mathematical ones, that
are put together to form propositions or assertions. Words and groupings of words are the
symbols that matter most for poetic syntax, although punctuation, line shapes, stanza forms,
metrical systems, and rhyme schemes are all crucial for understanding poetic syntax as a way
to organise words to create meaningful assertions.
When discussing poetry, syntax relates not only to real word arrangements or to the
grammatical rules, but also to the challenges posed to such arrangements. Word arrangements
that cause significant disorder within a language are included in the term “poetic licence.” As
a result, poetic syntax is a tricky and even in some ways a contradictory topic. Ferguson
writes that while many of the syntactic rules have changed over time, many still show
evidence of the close historical ties between Latin and English, two very different languages
that still share terminology and definitions of what constitutes syntactical “correctness.” The
most significant distinction between English and Latin for students of poetic syntax is that in
Latin, proximity and distance between words matter little for comprehending most written
sentences, but in English, meaning depends on particular words being in proximity to one
another. Most English poets challenge the reader's assumptions regarding word order, and
some English poets construct sentences with several sections that are more intricately tied to
one another than they would be in most modern English speech or writing.
Parts of Syntax
3.1 Sentences and Words
The first rule of the poetic game of syntax is that most poets utilise the grammatical unit
known as the sentence as a significant unit of meaning, together with—but sometimes in
contrast to—the unit of the poetic line or the unit of the stanza. The word is the smallest
meaning-bearing unit of syntax, whereas the sentence is the greatest. It is difficult to define
either unit. This is the case due to the fact that both sentences and words may be combined
and split in a variety of ways that get more complicated when they are examined
etymologically. Here Ferguson cautions us that we should not assume that modern rules
apply to texts written hundreds or even thousands of years ago because English has changed
so much over time; instead, we must do our best to incorporate historical context into our
readings.
Check Your Progress
1. Explain poetic licence.
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Kinds of Sentences
A sentence is a unit that contains a subject and a predicate.
• The most prevalent type of English sentence is Subject- Verb- Object. For example,
the bird eats the worm or, more elaborately, Edwin Muir's “The grasses threw straight
shadows far away” (‘Childhood’; p. 1337).
• Another typical sentence structure is a subject followed by a complementing predicate
(which relates back to the subject). The first line of Dryden's “Mac Flecknoe” (p.517),
“All human beings are subject to decay,” is an example of this type of sentence in
which there is no direct object; instead, a predicate complement informs us something
about the subject. Another example is the phrase “I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was
meant to be” from T. S. Eliot's “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (p. 1343) and
the great line “My attention is a wild / animal” from A. R. Ammons's “Pet Panther”
(p.1700). This kind of sentence encourages metaphor-making and identity-related
considerations.
• A subject followed by a verb that does not accept a direct object or predicate
complement constitutes a third category of sentences. Such verbs are referred to as
intransitive since they neither act on a direct object nor reflect back on the subject:
For instance, ‘Money speaks’, or ‘Jill faints’. Eliot offers a further, more detailed
example: “The winter evening settles down / With smell of steaks in passageways”
(“Preludes”).
Some contemporary poets and thinkers favour transitive verbs over all others. Ernest
Fenellosa, a philosopher who studied Chinese poetry and had a significant impact on Ezra
Pound, asserted that the “transfer of power” is a fundamental fact of nature and that the
correct use of poetic grammar is to depict an agent (subject) acting on an object (transitive
verb), as in ‘Farmer pounds rice.’
Even those contemporary English-language poets who appear to wage war against
grammar and punctuation, nonetheless rely on the classic subject-verb-direct object phrase as
a core building block of their poems. Paradoxically, this is true even when the poetry doesn't
seem to have whole sentences. Poets might presume that readers will struggle to generate a
sentence even when none first appears to exist since they are aware that proficient English
readers demand sentences. Reverting back to the line by Pope that was quoted at the start of
this essay, “'Gainst Pallas, Mars; Latona, Hermes arms,” Ferguson explains that with the use
of syntactic understanding, we can observe that “arms” in this line not only serves as a verb
but also acts, in a sense, retrospectively, as the intransitive verb for both portions of the
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assertion. Mars [arms] against Pallas; Hermes [arms] against Latona, to put it in prose.
Understanding grammar and being prepared to put in the effort to translate or paraphrase
Pope's impactful statement can help us make sense of his peculiar word choice.
Although some poets (and English instructors) agree with Fenellosa that sentences
should include a subject, an active verb, and a direct object, many poets use alternative
sentence structures to express various emotions related to action and passion as well as to
produce rhythms that are slightly different. The opening stanza of Kenneth Koch's poem
“Permanently” (p.1691), exemplifies all three of the fundamental categories of English
sentence construction and ends with a specific nod to one of them.
One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence.
In numerous sentences, something occurs, a story is conveyed, and time passes in a
significant way, as Koch's lines remind us. We stop at the finish, and since the late Middle
Ages, writing has used a ‘period’ to denote this pause. This symbol represents the visual
equivalent of a pause in speech or a moment to collect one's thoughts. The term “period” has
several historical connotations. One refers to the phrase itself, and the other to a specific type
of sentence in which a number of supporting clauses work together to support the main
clause.
3.2 Clauses
Because both sentences and clauses include subjects and predicates, a clause might appear to
be, or even be, a sentence. ‘Jill runs home’ is both, a clause and a sentence. However, a
clause is considered to be the smaller or “component” unit and a sentence to be the bigger or
“containing” unit. This is so because a sentence might include several clauses. One main
clause (or independent clause) and any number of dependent clauses make up the
Check Your Progress
1. What is a sentence?
2. Explain the three different sentence structures with suitable examples.
3. Why does Fenellosa favour transitive verbs over all others?
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aforementioned “periodic” sentence, for example, ‘When she remembered the time, which
she did when the bell rang, Jill ran home’. Although it has a subject and a predicate, a
subordinate clause cannot function as a complete sentence on its own. The main clause's
notion or picture is frequently expanded upon, qualified, or even refuted in the subordinate
clauses.
Kinds of Clauses
The noun, the adverb, and the adjective are the three parts of speech that subordinate clauses
mimic in terms of syntactic function. Adverbial clauses, for example, frequently follow
subordinating conjunctions such as- ‘after’, ‘although’, ‘as’, ‘as if’, ‘because’, ‘whether’, and
‘while’. Such an adverbial sentence appears at the beginning of Shakespeare's ‘Sonnet 106’
(p.265): “When in the chronicle of spent time / I behold descriptions of the finest wights...
“Adjectival clauses are usually begun with relative pronouns (that, which, who, whom,
whose) or relative adverbs when they modify a noun or pronoun (when, where, why).
Shakespeare employs an adjectival phrase in the second main clause of ‘Sonnet 116’” Let me
not to the marriage of true minds;’ (p.266): “Love is not love which alters when it alteration
finds.” Here, the main clause's contradictory statement is followed by and explained by the
subordinate clause.
Because they modify a noun, pronoun, or verb in the main clause and may be seen as
hanging on (depending on) a word in the main clause, adjective and adverbial clauses are
rather simple to identify. Noun clauses are more challenging to identify. Both relative
pronouns and alternative pronouns (what, whomever, whomever, and whatever), can be used
to introduce them. Additionally, several of the subordinating conjunctions that denote
adverbial phrases can be followed by noun clauses. Understanding the grammatical roles that
noun clauses play in the poetry sentences we are working with is essential to spotting them.
Noun clauses can take the form of subjects, direct objects, prepositional objects, or predicate
complements, but they can never stand on their own. To view the poem's syntactic skeleton
clearly, the poet sometimes leaves off the linking or articulating words, so these sections have
to be unearthed. However, to do this it is essential to understand how the clauses function
syntactically, in order to spot them; doing so leads to better understanding of the poem.
Ferguson illustrates how a poet creates meaning through the interaction of clauses by
using Shakespeare's ‘Sonnet 106’. To make the structure of the poem (given below) clear, the
beginning of main clauses is in bold and the beginning of subordinate clauses is italicized and
underlined.
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When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have expressed
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And, for they looked but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
Ferguson analyses this poem, by identifying the main clause or clauses. After locating the
poem's “head” and “torso,” as it were, she moves on to locating the “limbs,” which can be
thought of as the subordinate sentences. The main clause “I see,” comes in the 7th line of the
sonnet. It is not immediately identifiable as both its meaning and its syntax seem to depend
on the first dependent clause. The second clause is the main clause, even if the “when... then”
structure (each sentence receives precisely four lines) embodies a careful balancing of ideas.
“When” sets up expectations for the thought to be completed, and it is completed, but in a
way that the remainder of the sonnet qualifies and elaborates.
Once the main subject and verb are identified, the next step is to locate the direct
object. In the words “their ancient pen,” we briefly do. However, the syntax quickly forces us
to revise that assumption since the verb phrase that follows the pen's picture turns it into the
focus of a brand-new narrative: “I see [‘that’] their archaic pen would have expressed / Even
such a beauty...” Even experienced readers will have to engage in some unconscious editing,
reversing the normal forward reading motion, to automatically add ‘that’ (the missing relative
pronoun). By identifying the direct object of the first main clause as a subordinate noun
clause, we begin to understand that the “object” the poet finally perceives in his main clause
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is not actually an object, a thing, at all; rather, what the Shakespearean speaker perceives
(both here and elsewhere in his sonnets) “is an amazing blending of past and present, of
certainty and supposition: a constructed object rather than a natural one” (p.2059). In this
way, the main clause and its exfoliating direct object help to inform us about the speaker's
perspective as well as what he sees. What is interesting here is, the speaker is interpreting
meanings from old books in relation to his present and, implicitly, his future.
To understand the sonnet, a new subordinate clause in line 8 needs to be created. Even
such a beauty as [the one that] you master now. This subordinate clause, functioning both to
rename and to describe the “beauty” that is the direct object of the noun clause functioning as
a direct object of “I see,” blurs the traditional distinction between adjectival and noun clause.
Just as ‘that’ was added (line 7) to see the noun clause serving as the direct object of “I see,”
so we also need to add missing words (the one that) to line 8 to make it work. The poem's
reflection on themes of mastery, competitiveness, and relationships of dependency between
the past and present, lover and beloved, writer and reader, subject and object of seeing, is
made possible by the syntax: the interaction of the main and subordinate clauses.
More main clauses appear in the last six lines than the first eight, and in the last
couplet, they do so more quickly, and let us to perceive the logical framework of the poet's
ideas. The coordinating conjunctions “So,” “And,” and “For” are used to introduce them. In
line 11 the embedded subordinate clause may lead us to believe it is a main clause (“for,”
after all, introduces a main clause just two lines later). However, a closer look reveals that the
collection of words introduced by the first “for” functions as an adverb, altering the verb
phrase in the next line. In line 11, ‘And’, both interrupts and clarifies the poet's assertion that
his forebears lacked the ability to praise the speaker's beloved because they could only see
him or her by “divining”. Although identifying main clauses from subordinate clauses is not
always simple, it is crucial to our understanding of the syntax of a poem.
Check Your Progress
1. What is a clause? How is it different from a sentence?
2. What is the difference between main clause and subordinate clause?
3. Define adjectival, adverbial and noun clauses.
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3.3 Moves in the Game
Ferguson, in the previous sections has identified the main components of syntax. In this
section she discusses how the poets put sentences to different uses by making them in various
ways, as well as readers' expectations of those uses.
Poets often use subordinate clauses to postpone the use of a main verb, and this
creates anticipation between the poet and the reader. For example, at the beginning of
Paradise Lost (p.421) before we get to the main verb ‘sing’ of the first poetic sentence,
Milton gives us several lines of intricately interconnected subordinate clauses to consider and
remember. William Collins does the same at the beginning of “Ode to Evening” (p.675). The
imperative verb phrase “now teach me” appears in line 15, following a long subordinate
clause (beginning “If aught...”) in which the poet appears to be trying to convince his
addressee—the “Evening” personified as “Eve”—that his own “pastoral song” has the ability
“to soothe thy modest ear.”
Nominal Syntax
‘In a Station of the Metro’
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Pound's short poem given above is a good example of nominal syntax, which has two noun phrases
but no verb. Ferguson quotes Cureton and states that noun phrases allow the reader to draw a
“conceptual or emotional connection between the poem's syntactic parts” (p.2061). Pound gives us
two powerful images which appear to come from two very different worlds—on the one hand, the
bustling city, and on the other hand, that of nature. Contemporary poets employ a variety of sentence
fragmentation techniques to subvert conventions of everyday language and poetic tradition. They
assume that the reader is familiar enough with sentence structure to understand the meanings that are
produced when expectations are not met. Such writers highlight the idea that syntax serves as a sort of
contract between the poet and the reader. E. E. Cummings seems to defend breaching syntactic and
other language rules in the first stanza of “since feeling is first” (p.1349):
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
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This four-line unit ends with a semicolon, a punctuation mark that, generally indicates the conclusion
of a main clause. He is making employing an ancient and significant literary technique known as
double syntax, as described by critic William Empson.
Double Syntax
When a phrase, line, or set of lines can be understood in two distinct ways depending on the syntax
that comes before and/or after the unit, this is the case. In many instances of double syntax, the poet
first presents us with an idea that appears to be finished—in a syntactic unit that appears to be an
independent clause—before going on to rewrite the idea, frequently in a humorous or paradoxical
way, by revealing that the unit we initially believed to be finished is actually a part of a larger and
typically more conceptually difficult syntactic structure, frequently a sentence.
The first three lines of Cummings' poem “since feeling is first” can be seen as a complicated sentence
comprising a subordinate adverbial phrase and a main clause. The first three lines can be paraphrased
as follows: Who in their right mind would care about the syntax (the orderly or logical arrangement of
things), since feeling comes first. The question is rhetorical as it presupposes a simple solution that
everyone agrees on. Simply put the lines would mean, since feelings are of a higher order on the value
scale, syntax is not of much importance.
The stanza however doesn’t end there. Cummings introduces a phrase in line 4 that initially appears to
be unconnected to the previous three lines. The first three lines however will need to be read again in
light of the new idea presented in line 4. The entire section can be summarised as: He, who is more
concerned with the syntax of things will never kiss you completely since feelings come first. The
second, more comprehensive interpretation calls for us to include a relative pronoun(he) before the
word “who,” changing the opening lines from a straightforward (and maybe simplistic) rhetorical
query to a more complicated assertion.
3.4 Word Order Inversions
Inversions of the standard subject-verb-object structure of transitive sentences are the source of
numerous lyrical difficulties, including several in double syntax examples. The most frequent of these
modifications puts the direct object before the subject and verb. Edward Taylor begins his poem
“Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children” (p. 537) with the words “A curious knot God made in
paradise”. Had Taylor chosen the standard sentence format, “God made a curious knot in paradise”,
he could not have established the visually arresting connection between ‘wedlock’ in the title and
Check Your Progress
1. Explain nominal and double syntax with one example each.
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Introduction to Literary Studies
‘knot’ in the opening line. As in many poems, word order inversion as this one enables the poet to
draw attention to a particular theme or picture.
In this lesson we have understood an important aspect of poetry which is poetic syntax. Each language
has a different set of grammatical rules (syntax) governing it, and hence it is important for us to
understand the syntactic features of the English language in order to appreciate English literature in
general, and poetry in particular. We have dealt with the two major components of syntax- sentences
and clauses- in detail with particular emphasis on the various ways in which poets use them to achieve
a desired effect. Therefore, when discussing poetry, syntax relates not only to real word arrangements
or to the grammatical rules, but also to the challenges posed to such arrangements. Word
arrangements that cause significant disorder within a language are referred to as “poetic licence”. We
have also dealt with some other ways in which poets experiment with language, notably- nominal
syntax, double syntax and word order inversions.
All References are from
Ferguson, Margaret, Mary Jo Slater and Jon Stallworthy. The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5
th edition,
New York and London: W.W. Norton &Company,2005.
Check Your Progress
1. What is word order inversion. Explain with example.
