Review from Times Literary Supplement, 23rd April 1964

A few weeks ago in this paper a letter from Mr Zulfikar Ghose initiated a controversy on the subject of syllabic metres. In his letter Mr Ghose set out to defend what he described as the "almost pioneering work in syllabics" done by Mr George MacBeth and Mr B. S. Johnson. Now Mr Johnson's first volume appears equipped with a "Note on Metre" in which most of Mr Ghose's claims are recapitulated.

Mr Johnson is not merely arguing that it is possible to write interesting poetry in syllabic patterns (though even here, of course, it needs to be proved that the poetry is interesting because it is syllabic and not because of the behaviour of its stresses); his somewhat eccentric point is that there is a clear distinction to be drawn between metres which can be heard and those which can be seen. The counting of syllables, he maintains, is an activity which can be relished visually and, since most readers receive their poetry nowadays in printed form, it is "more appropriate" to deal in syllabics rather than in "those metres which depend on sound".

By this, Mr Johnson does not mean what cummings or Williams might have meant; he has no intention of making soda-signs out of asterisks. For him, it is the regular disposition of syllables which has this visual appeal. But surely, then, his theory ought not to stop short at syllables; the counting of letters, the measuring of ems, the felicitous distribution of commas, semi-colons and dotted i's ought to yield even greater visual impact. Does he really mean that the following is in a metre "which is easily apprehended visually"?

Not by nature simples, as his end might
possibly suggest, the unicorn to
a large extent enjoyed his vocation;
such he called it, this holy business of

purifying the means of life for those
unable to perform it for themselves;

Mr Johnson seems not to be sure himself; as if recognizing that his antitheses have become a little bold, he goes on to say that "syllabic metres can also be recognized by ear" and that they "enable a poet to use the rhythms ... of colloquial speech", but then he spoils it all by insisting that such qualities are only available to the reader who is "not expecting a stress metre". Of course, it is not as simple as that; it does not matter whether or not the reader is expecting a stress-metre - the stresses are there and if he is recognizing anything by ear he will be recognizing them. If they are ugly an disorganized he will recognize that too, just as he would recognize their creative ordering. Consequently, when a pause descends between "to" and "a large extent", and when "of" is found to be suspended at the end of a stanza, he is likely to wonder why; if Mr Johnson retorts that this is colloquial speech, the reader will not believe him, and if Mr Johnson then reveals that the pauses are there because he has promised himself ten syllables to every line, the reader will think - very rightly - that it is all something of an academic bore.

Syllabics aside, Mr Johnson is not an uninteresting writer; he has a number of energetic love-poems and some fluent memories of a wartime childhood. He can also be neatly ironic on urban seediness. His language hesitates rather oddly between the stiffly pompous ("Solicitous of my charges", "these, my children", "two lovers made a wine-lodge vow") and the daringly idiomatic ("waist-high tits", "a not-that-sort-of-girl", "three parts Canuted") without finally settling into either, and he tends to lean too casually on a compressed explanatory punchline. But when he feels no duty to be wise, Mr Johnson can offer - in rollicking iambics - the brisk inventiveness of his "Song of a Wagon-Driver" or the sardonic balance of "Daughter"; for these alone, he is worth watching.