In "Writing," part 2 of the Prologue to The Dyer's Hand, W. H. Auden wrote
Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice; if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest.
After two months of frustration, it's become clear I lack authority over Anglo-Saxon prosody, and so ends my project of writing a poem in every named from Lewis Turco's original The Book of Forms (out of print; revised and expanded edition here). I suppose I could just skip the form and go on to the awdl gywydd, but it feels like cheating, especially since I've already written one that Turco himself liked.
I think my principal problem with Anglo-Saxon meter stems from the years of hard work I've done to achieve at least a simulacrum of conversational tone in my poetry. That relentless 4-beat multiply alliterated line sounds like shouting to me—as does much spoken word and rap, and I am not the first to have have noted a prosodic and thematic relation between the two. Here is Beowulf bragging, from Alan Sullivan and Timothy Murphy's excellent translation:
I am no weaker in works of war,
no less a grappler than Grendel himself.
Soon I shall sink him into his death-sleep,
Not with my sword but solely by strength.
And here is the opening of Ice-T's "Colors":
I am a nightmare walking, psychopath talking
King of my jungle just a gangster stalking
Living life like a firecracker quick is my fuse
Then dead as a deathpack the colors I choose
I like both a great deal (and in this particular comparison, I like Ice-T's lines better), but they're just not what I do.
On the other hand (was there a first hand?), I'm a firm believer in skill, in the notion that an accomplished poet should be able to some considerable degree to write to order. I'm envious of Janet Kenny's occasional poems, of the seemingly casual virtuosity of Greg Williamson, of any poet who, like Sam Gwynn, can write assuredly in many different voices (watch him here start a reading at the Library of Congress, surrounded by Laura Bush's name, with three anti-war poems.)
In light of all this, I hope Auden's first hypothetical above applies to my accentual-syllabic poetry, and that I'm not deluded in the way he describes a little earlier in the same piece:
Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too "personal" style.
2:53:54 PM 
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