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After analysing 'For Sidney Bechet' (Philip Larkin) and `The Weeping Song' (Nick Cave) in terms of `poetic rhythm', using the techniques Derek Attridge lays out, show how this adds or subtracts from the meaning of the pieces.


Before commencing with my analysis, I feel it necessary to give a summary of my interpretation of the two poems. 'The Weeping Song' is in one degree a song of mourning about the misery of men and women, and in another degree a dialogue between father and son. Philip Larkin's 'For Sidney Bechet' has a distinctive musical theme, with references to New Orleans (the origin of Jazz music), and "that note you hold" implies a sense of a singer or musical instrument within the poem. Indeed, there are indications that the poet is in an audience listening to a performer "play that thing!", for "On me your voice falls" and thus both poems share one quality: 'The Weeping Song' is a song, and 'For Sidney Bechet' is about a song's performance.
Nick Cave's 'The Weeping Song' is largely a quatrain consisting of trochaic feet; that is to say that stanzas are based on four line units and consist of words where intonation emphasises the initial consonant; for example,

/ x / x
women weeping

Using my natural spoken dialect, emphasis falls more on the initial syllable and tails off on the final syllable, indicating the common trochee foot. Indeed, in 'The Weeping Song' all polysyllabic words follow this general trochaic patterning:

/ x
weeping

/ x
Father

/ x
children

/ x
merely

As a dialogue between father and son, 'The Weeping Song' combines their two voices. Thus consistent use of trochaic feet brings together their voices and creates a sense of unity within the song, preventing fragmentation of the rhythm. 'For Sidney Bechet' also uses a regular patterning of feet, although in this instance the polysyllabic words (taken at random from several stanzas) utilise dactylic feet, with a secondary-stress on the final syllable.

/ x \
narrowing

/ x \
legendary

/ x \
personnels

/ x \
Scattering

However, although 'For Sidney Bechet' consistently makes use of dactylic feet, the general sense derived from their use is subtle and complex. The poem exists in a variety of terza rima meter (aba bcd etc.,) and also relies on syntactic breaks and phrasal movement to create rhythm. Indeed, its reliance on phrasal movement within the largely tercet stanzas, creates a particular form of rhythm differing greatly from the predictable quatrain patterning of 'The Weeping Song'. The use of dactylic feet may therefore be a method of creating an underlying rhythm to the piece, to create a sense of flow and regularity, for the poem is about a musical performance and thus requires a degree of harmony. This sense of phrasal flow is aided by use of rhyme patterns which move across the line-juncture of each stanza, creating patterns of anticipation and arrival.
In the tercet stanzas of 'For Sidney Bechet' there is an alternating abab rhyme pattern between the words "shakes" and "wakes", and "water" and "Quarter". This rhyme pattern produces a rhythm between the stanzas, and thus an expectation in the reader that the rhythm will be continued. However, that expectation is disappointed in the rhyming of "priced" and "unnoticed". Although established as words which should rhyme, "priced" is placed amongst a line of dominant alliterative 's' consonants which encourage its reading as another 's' sound through use of assonance; while "unnoticed" has strong emphasis on the wrong syllable to facilitate the rhyme:

/ x \
unnoticed

The secondary-stress on the rhyming syllable demotes the syllable and disjoints the ruling rhythm of the piece -the primary stress should fall on the final syllable in order for the rhyme to work. Indeed, the words "fads" and "plaids" do not match, and the final two line stanza (which breaks with the tercet form) carries an additional rhyme on the patterning of "should" and "understood", with "good" following immediately after: if the reader has not noticed the decay of the rhythm, then by now its irregular state is overt and unavoidable. However, the decay of the rhythm has semantic value; a sense of confusion and alienation is produced which reflects on the sense that the performer is misunderstood by all except the poet:

My Crescent City
Is where your speech alone is understood,

I have emboldened the word "alone" to bring out the quality of my interpretation; for I read this word with a beat, suggesting a sense of the performer's isolation from the audience.
'The Weeping Song' employs alternating rhyme and rhyming couplets as a tool to hold together the two voices of the dialogue, that of the father and that of the son. However, this poem takes the rhythm a stage further by use of grammatical repetition:
Father, why are all the women weeping?

They are weeping for their men

Then why are all the men there weeping?

They are weeping back at them

Lines with grammatical compatibility have been underlined, and in this instance the compatibility serves to characterise the voice of the child with an insistent tone demonstrating his curiosity; the repetition also serves to produce a chant-like quality to the rhythm. Assonance functions on the alternative lines, with "men" and "them" providing a dominant pace for the lines' rhythm, and indeed, even these lines utilise patterns of grammatical repetition. The question-marks at the end of the son's lines set a pattern of anticipation, for the reader wishes to arrive at the answer of the question. However, the use of grammatical repetition, as opposed to the arrival at a distinct answer, serves to illustrate the ambiguity over why the people are weeping. Indeed, this ambiguity makes the weeping seem motiveless and even ridiculous; thus 'For Sidney Bechet' and 'The Weeping Song' both use rhythm to convey some form of confusion.
Alliteration is used by both poems to create a distinct tone (here underlined for show on examples). 'The Weeping Song' uses the alliteration of the 'w' consonant:

Father, why are all the women weeping?

and thus creates a monotonous drawl which reflects the whimpering of the song. 'For Sidney Bechet' uses the alliteration of the 's' consonant in the line:

Sporting-house girls like circus tigers priced

with the addition of assonance in the word "priced", which creates a light, tongue hissing motion in the mouth. The resultant effect is that the "Sporting-house girls" are given a sound quality alluding to that of a snake, and thus take on a sinister and sly tone; the implied hostility of the line is anchored by the word "tigers", which focuses the reader into an animalistic interpretation of the alliteration and assonance. Indeed, the dominant 's' sound also conveys a degree of frivolity to the subject-matter, reflected in the word "circus" -a place of performance and games -establishing an aural contrast with:

While scholars manques nod around unnoticed

where the dominant alliterative sound 'd' produces a heavy, dragging motion within the mouth. Thus the tonality of the poem -the relationship between the light alliterative 's' and the heavy alliterative 'd' -establishes an expectation of contrast within the subject-matter. While the "Sporting-house girls" are frivolous, the "scholars" are dull, heavy and monotonous and go "unnoticed". In my opinion this contrast suggests that because the scholars go unnoticed, "in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes" and ignorance prevails amongst the performance. Indeed, this sense of ignorance is aided by the degeneration of the rhyme scheme, as I have discussed earlier, which reflects the confusion of the poem and of the ignorant audience of "Sporting-house girls". However, I do not profess to be correct on this matter, I merely wish to illustrate how varying interpretations of rhythm can give rise to equally abstract semantic interpretations.
Poetic rhythm hinges on the stress of the meter, that is to say that certain words and syllables demand a more emphatic reading while others are passed over with little intonation. Although stress tends to avoid conjunctions, recognising where it should occur is a problematic and difficult task. As an oral tradition, closely following and exploiting the patterns of speech, poetry demands to be spoken aloud. Thus dialect and accent play an important role in recognising the pattern of a rhythm; individual readers will have different preconceptions on pronunciation. Common readings, with according views of rhythm, will therefore be less likely. Indeed, an American reader, an English reader and a French reader will all be bound within the cultural nuances of their native language and sub-dialects, and may therefore have wildly differing interpretations of a poem. Lacking a distinct accent myself, recognising where stress, secondary-stress and beat naturally fall has proved a difficult enterprise in this analysis. Attridgeís techniques demand concordance among readers on both intonation and pronunciation, and thus are not completely satisfactory. Even if one uniform interpretation of rhythm could be agreed, it would nonetheless give rise to several interpretations of its meaning, and so it is important to understand that rhythm, although imparting something to a poem, whether in its dynamic or intrinsic status, does not facilitate one true reading of a poem's meaning.







Bibliography

H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms, sixth edition (Cornell University, Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1993)

Derek Attridge, Poetic Ryhthm: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 1995)

John Lennard, The Poetry Handbook: A Guide to Reading Poetry for Pleasure and Practical Criticism (Oxford University Press, 1996)