1/28/2024 0 Comments Strophes in poetryI’m convinced this form-prose, but set up as strophes-has a bright future ahead of it. Individual poems will look like many of the pages of Kenneth Jackson’s Celtic Miscellany, where he translates from his (mainly Irish and Welsh) originals, preserving their strophic structure with white spaces (but leaving out the line breaks because he judged they would be meaningless in a literal translation). The rhythm will come from the strophic structure of the paragraphs.Ī visual might help. There will be no rhythm-properly-so-called in the sentences. The candidate must set up her poem as prose, with white space between the same-sized paragraphs, each paragraph about an inch tall, no line breaks, only stanza breaks. And best of all, their peers will be into it. It’s not hard, it doesn’t conduce to pastiche, it doesn’t prevent the kids from saying what they want to say. I only mean meter will be back in the toolbox, it will have a place at the table, it will be alive and well. Free verse, meanwhile, may continue as hitherto.) (Not that all poems will be metrical then. I urge that we frankly admit defeat on this front and completely give over all efforts to revive meter in any kind of a straightforward way, and instead teach the young people a “new” form, which I call STROPHIC PROSE, a form they are certain to like, and which will secretly, quietly, cunningly create conditions that, perhaps a hundred years from now, will ripen into a large-scale revival of meter. They will treat my poem as though I am insisting on using words like doth and thou and beseemeth.” And so, Goodnight, meter. The beginner says in her heart, “Meter is difficult it conduces to pastiche it prevents me from saying what I want to say-and moreover, none of my peers will be into it. For the beginning USA poet, in 2016, there are just too many ready-to-hand reasons not to try meter in her own stuff. One points one smacks one’s lips dharma does the rest.Įxcept it doesn’t work. ![]() Reasons and analogies and explanations are not to the purpose. One reads aloud some poems where the meter is key-“Easter 1916,” “The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens”-and one points out, charismatically smacking one’s lips, that the meter is key. It can seem, to those of us who teach poetry writing, that the only way to sell young poets on metrical effects is by contagion. I am going to advance a radical proposition. We have a great deal to discuss, but I must be brief. If you find in your bosom any doubts regarding this matter, I’m going to ask you to please rise from your seat and locate your nearest exit, keeping in mind that it may be behind you, or opening right now at your feet. ![]() Carl August Ehrensvärd, Birth of the Poet, 1795.īefore we begin, I need you to search your heart and evaluate soberly whether you have ever had the experience of sincerely enjoying metrical effects in poetry.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |