Discussion on Poetics - split off from previous thread.

[Seraphim]

Form or structure. Type. Devices. All that. The language, the words, the sounds, the line breaks, the grammar, syntax, all that. Sonnet, free verse, prose paragraphs, all that. The form implies some context as much as the content. In a heavy way or light way. Heavy in an allusive or traditional or visual or oral way. Light in a nearly arbitrary choice of form. All that.

In English there are 20 vowel sounds, 12 pure and 8 glided.
There are 8 diphthongs.

My point was not the vowel sounds, but the vowels themselves. In a paragraph, you're going to see the same vowel over and over again. That doesn't mean each instant is using the same sound, and when they are, it is often coincidence, not design.

---

billy

Thanks for chiming in. What do you do, if I may ask, to improve your poetry? What do you look at and try to change?

---

Dug out a bunch of old books, and have been reading up on the prosody of 'free verse'. One of the best citations, imo, refer to Pound's comment about cadence being critical (not the exact wording) to free verse, which lead to differentiating between cadence and rhythm.

I think my best option to learn here is to step away from metrics (as much as possible lol) and try something different. We'll see how it goes.