flem
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response 4 of 6:
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Jun 9 22:34 UTC 1999 |
re resp:1 - The meter was simply me trying to avoid iambic, since the
first few lines, which were the ones that suddenly came to me, and of
which the rest of the poem is just an elaboration, were not iambic.
Rather than attempt to change them, I tried to stick with the
opposite of iambic (whose name I can't recall off the top of my head;
dactylic perhaps? hmm...), which resulted in odd line breaks
sometimes. But more natural line breaks would have made me slip
into iambic. When that happens, it's hard for me to get back out. :)
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flem
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response 6 of 6:
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Jun 13 06:12 UTC 1999 |
I don't know. I mean, lots of the "classic" poetry I read has line
breaks in places that appear funny to me if I've been reading free verse
recently, but it manages to make sense anyway. I think that when
reading poetry, the ability to, when necessary, *ignore* line breaks is
important. A lot of the singsongy effect that inexperienced poets get
(not that I claim to be experienced or anything) when they try to write
metered poetry, especially with lines of fixed length and/or rhyme, is
due to a tendency to try to make line breaks coincide with rhythmic
pauses. Conversely, I picked a random Shakespeare sonnet just now and
found this couplet:
Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime.
When I read that, I pause at the comma, run straight through the line
break as if it weren't there, and put a very slight pause between "back"
and "the" in the second line.
Now, I grant that in the Shakespeare example the line break doesn't
separate a phrase like I did with "wooden / Men", but then I never
claimed to be on the order of Shakespeare yet. :)
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