Discussion on Poetics - split off from previous thread.

[Seraphim]

I've essentially been a formalist / metrical poet my entire life.  As mentioned in the previous thread, which we are going to let continue on a different vein, my definition of prose and poetry depends on the craft of poetics:  understanding how the English language is constructed, meter, rhythm, rhetorical devices, etc.  How do we achieve the 'heightened language' which Rowens first - IIRC -mentioned?

I also realize my opinions are not fact. They are always open to questioning and revision on my part. I think that's called 'learning' lol.

Does anyone have a place where they would like to begin the conversation, or would like to continue a thought or discussion on  from the previous thread?

[Seraphim]

Then let me start with a question.

How do you [personally] create and develop rhythm in a line?

[rowens]

I'm primarily improvisational. I read a lot, I think a lot, I go out and have different kinds of experiences, I absorb atmospheres in my room at night or day or walking around outside, then I sit down and write, and everything that needs to coalesces. I spent most of my life feeding on my own stomach, when I met up with the educated world, I bent it all to my will. My needs and desires. I feel spaces for rhythm and have a hunger to fill them, and feel the beats physically as I write them. I make standard-traditional angles and obtuse angles on the page and in the air. It's sex and death and rearrangements, transfigurations of organisms. Literally and figuratively. It's obvious I don't give a lot of thought to craftmanship.

[UselessBlueprint]

my definition of prose and poetry depends on the craft of poetics:  understanding how the English language is constructed, meter, rhythm, rhetorical devices, etc.

Interesting constraint here.

How do you [personally] create and develop rhythm in a line?

In a single line? It usually depends on the lines surrounding it. If the meter matters, I've usually preselected it. I would usually stick to some kind of tetrameter if I wanted to utilize a strict pattern, but a strict meter is rarely a requirement for any poem that doesn't mandate a form. I mean, if I'm writing a sonnet I'll try to stay on IP, but for something without a chosen form, I'll be fluid and adapt to the flow of the poem.

Am I writing about a lake? Vary the meter, be fluid -- ripples are like white noise.
Am I writing about ticking clocks? Iambic or trochaic -- regular ticks and tocks. Clock stops? End the line with a missing foot.
There's a bit of a craft involved, yes. But this just a matter of selection. Actually making the line? That's just what poetry always has been: finding the "right" words.

[busker]

I've essentially been a formalist / metrical poet my entire life.  As mentioned in the previous thread, which we are going to let continue on a different vein, my definition of prose and poetry depends on the craft of poetics:  understanding how the English language is constructed, meter, rhythm, rhetorical devices, etc.  How do we achieve the 'heightened language' which Rowens first - IIRC -mentioned?

I also realize my opinions are not fact.  They are always open to questioning and revision on my part. I think that's called 'learning' lol.

Does anyone have a place where they would like to begin the conversation, or would like to continue a thought or discussion on  from the previous thread?

An example of a prose poem:

The Dead Seal, by Robert Bly
             1
          Walking north along the point, I find a dead seal. From a few feet away, he looks like a brown log. The body is on its back, dead only a few hours. I stand and look at him. There’s a quiver in the dead flesh: My God, he’s still alive. And a shock goes through me, as if a wall of my room had fallen away.
             
          His head is arched back, the small eyes closed; the whiskers sometimes rise and fall. He is dying. This is oil. Here on its back is the oil that heats our houses so efficiently. Wind blows fine sand back toward the ocean. The flipper near me lies folded over the stomach, looking like an unfinished arm, lightly glazed with sand at its edges. The other flipper lies half underneath. And the seal’s skin looks like an old over coat, scratched here and there — by sharp mussel shells maybe.
       
          I reach out and touch him. Suddenly, he rears up, turns over. He gives three cries: Awaark! Awaark! Awaark! — like the cries from Christmas toys. He lunges toward me, I am terrified and leap back, though I know there can be no teeth in that jaw. He starts flopping toward the sea. But he falls over, on his face. He does not want to go back to the sea. He looks up at the sky, and he looks like and old lady who has lost her hair. He puts his chin back down on the sand, rearranges his flippers, and waits for me to go. I go.
         
 
               2
          The next day I go back to say goodbye. He’s dead now. But he’s not.  He’s a quarter mile farther up the shore. Today he is thinner, squatting on his stomach, head out. The ribs show more: each vertebra on the back under the coat is visible, shiny. He breathes in and out.
        
          A wave comes in, touches his nose. He turns and looks at me — the eyes slanted; the crown of his head looks like a boy’s leather jacket bending over some bicycycle bars. He is taking a long time to die. The whiskers white as porcupine quills, the forehead slopes.
     
          Goodbye, brother, die in the sound of the waves. Forgive us if we have killed you. Long live your  race, your inner-tube race, so uncomfortable on the land, so comfortable in the ocean. Be comfortable in death, then, when the sand will be out of your nostrils, and you can swim in long loops through the pure death, ducking under as assassinations break above you. You don’t want to be touched by me. I climb the cliff and go home the other way.

[Seraphim]

my definition of prose and poetry depends on the craft of poetics:  understanding how the English language is constructed, meter, rhythm, rhetorical devices, etc.

Interesting constraint here.

How do you [personally] create and develop rhythm in a line?

In a single line? It usually depends on the lines surrounding it. If the meter matters, I've usually preselected it. I would usually stick to some kind of tetrameter if I wanted to utilize a strict pattern, but a strict meter is rarely a requirement for any poem that doesn't mandate a form. I mean, if I'm writing a sonnet I'll try to stay on IP, but for something without a chosen form, I'll be fluid and adapt to the flow of the poem.

Am I writing about a lake? Vary the meter, be fluid -- ripples are like white noise.
Am I writing about ticking clocks? Iambic or trochaic -- regular ticks and tocks. Clock stops? End the line with a missing foot.
There's a bit of a craft involved, yes. But this just a matter of selection. Actually making the line? That's just what poetry always has been: finding the "right" words.

I ask about rhythm, you talk about meter. Are they the same thing? Is the implication here that non-metrical poetry has no rhythm?

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Busker

So what specifically is poetic about your example? [Question, not argument]

[busker]

Busker

So what specifically is poetic about your example?  [Question, not argument]

Poetry is many things.
There's the sonic quality, of course. That is one of the aspects of primitive poetry. From "Menin aeide Thea" to "Grendel gongann god's yre bare" (to compare the great with the small), and eventually, "for skies of couple colour as a brinded cow", there's the magic of sound. Tetrameter or the more boring iambic pentameter.
The measured use of sound brings pleasure  (till it becomes overused and pedestrian), but rhyme also brings pleasure. The Romance languages, because of the way their verbs conjugate, and for Italian, the vowel endings of nouns, abound in rhymes. Which is why Dante can go on and on with:

E come li stornei ne portan l’ali
     Nel freddo tempo, a schiera larga e piena;
     Così quel fiato li spiriti mali

Di qua, di là, di giù, di su li mena:
     Nulla speranza li conforta mai,
     Non che di posa, ma di minor pena.

and write an entire epic in terza rima, without it even grating. However, English being nowhere nearly as rhyme-rich, can't have poems written the same way. Or if it does, then you get the barbarous rantings of Chaucer:

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

Etc

So English poetry is more economical with rhymes. Regular rhyming schemes don't work very well in English, but complex ones, and especially half-rhymes, work quite well. There is a different sort of effect that you get with consonant endings, rhyming or not.

The point is that sound is one of the instruments of creating aesthetic pleasure.

Imagery is another - the ability to conjure a vivid picture with few words - showing rather than telling.

The Dead Seal does a great job of showing.

Prose is more telling rather than showing. Where it shows, prose is frequently described as lyrical or even poetic, proving the point.
Conversely, writing out A Brief History of Time with line breaks will be seen as distinctly prosaic.

[Seraphim]

Busker

So what specifically is poetic about your example?  [Question, not argument]

Poetry is many things.
There's the sonic quality, of course. That is one of the aspects of primitive poetry.

I wasn't asking what poetry is - I already got slammed pretty hard for that one *grin*.

I was asking about specific examples in this poem that you personally find poetic.

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Your comment on primitive poetry also intrigues me. So, is all 'prose poetry' primitive poetry?

[busker]

Specifically about the Dead Seal - so many things. Later, maybe. Have to get back to a report on the use of filter presses...

[Seraphim]

Tell you what - before this goes far afield, let’s stick to the topic of rhythm. Talk tome specifically about the rhythm in Dead Seal. What did Bly do to create a sense of rhythm in the poem.

[busker]

Tell you what - before this goes far afield, let’s stick to the topic of rhythm.  Talk tome specifically about the rhythm in Dead Seal. What did Bly do to create a sense of rhythm in the poem.

Please read note above. Sonics and rhythm are one type of tool used in poetry and are used where appropriate. It is not needed in all situations and not in this one.

[Seraphim]

Tell you what - before this goes far afield, let’s stick to the topic of rhythm.  Talk tome specifically about the rhythm in Dead Seal. What did Bly do to create a sense of rhythm in the poem.

Please read note above. Sonics and rhythm are one type of tool used in poetry and are used where appropriate. It is not needed in all situations and not in this one.

Are you suggesting this example has no rhythm?

[busker]

Tell you what - before this goes far afield, let’s stick to the topic of rhythm.  Talk tome specifically about the rhythm in Dead Seal. What did Bly do to create a sense of rhythm in the poem.

Please read note above. Sonics and rhythm are one type of tool used in poetry and are used where appropriate. It is not needed in all situations and not in this one.

Are you suggesting this example has no rhythm?

Not one that stands out from normal speech

[churinga]

How sound works:


Walking north along the point, I find a dead seal. From a few feet away, he looks like a brown log. The body is on its back, dead only a few hours. I stand and look at him. There’s a quiver in the dead flesh: My God, he’s still alive. And a shock goes through me, as if a wall of my room had fallen away

the 'o' sound of north, along, point (point is a dipthong of o)
the 'in' sound of walking and find
the 'e sound of dead and seal
the alliteration of From, few, feet
the alliteration of looks, like
the 'o' sound of brown and log which rebounds to 'along' in the first phrase.
the alliteration of body and back, which rebounds to brown
the repetition of dead.
the 'o' sounds of on ( its back) and only and hours ( a diphthong of o)
the 'I' sound of I (stand ) and him and quiver.
repitition of dead again.
the i sound of My, still and alive.
the 'o' sound of shock, goes ,through (dipthong)
the alliteration of if and fallen
the repition of the 'all' sound in wall and fallen.
the return of the 'w' sound in away to the first word, walking. This is called book-ending.

Sounds create both rhythm and melody or perhaps better put harmony or harmonic intonation. They are all degrees of the same thing. . Phonetic symbology can really analyse this but I have done my best. When you look at language in this detail you see how sounds work. If you analyzed dull bureaucratic or legal writing or even newspaper reporting, there would also be some harmonies but much less. This writer is consciously or unconsciously employing words in a harmonious and rhythmic way to enchant us and creates a mild trance-like state.

[busker]

Thanks

How sound works:


Walking north along the point, I find a dead seal. From a few feet away, he looks like a brown log. The body is on its back, dead only a few hours. I stand and look at him. There’s a quiver in the dead flesh: My God, he’s still alive. And a shock goes through me, as if a wall of my room had fallen away

the 'o' sound of north, along, point (point is a dipthong of o)
the 'in' sound of walking and find
the 'e sound  of dead and seal
the alliteration of From, few, feet
the alliteration of looks, like
the 'o' sound of brown and log which rebounds to 'along' in the first phrase.
the alliteration of body and back, which rebounds to brown
the repetition of dead.
the 'o' sounds of  on ( its back) and only and hours ( a diphthong of o)
the 'I' sound of I (stand ) and him and quiver.
repitition of dead again.
the i sound of My, still and alive.
the 'o' sound of shock, goes ,through (dipthong)
the alliteration of if and fallen
the repition of the 'all' sound in wall and fallen.
the return of the 'w' sound in away to the first word, walking. This is called book-ending.

Sounds create both rhythm and melody or perhaps better put harmony or harmonic intonation.   They are all degrees of the same thing. .  Phonetic symbology can really analyse this but I have done my best.  When you look at language in this detail you see how sounds work.  If you analyzed dull bureaucratic or legal writing or even newspaper reporting, there would also be some harmonies but much less.  This writer is consciously or unconsciously employing words in a harmonious and rhythmic way to enchant us and creates a mild trance-like state.

Similar observations can be made about any prose extract.
This is over interpreting
There is some rhythm from the use of short sentences, and there even be meter here, haven’t looked.
But short, observational passages employing a multitude of similes makes it poetry like.

[Seraphim]

Churinga

I’m going to stop asking questions for a moment and agree with busker - you’re over interpreting. For example, North, along and point all have o’s in them, but not the same ‘o’ sound. There are essentially only 5 vowels. If Bly used the same sound, we’d call it assonance. Same with dead and seals: a visual rhyme, but that’s not the same thing. If and fallen is not an example of alliteration. I’d agree with about 4 of your examples.

I used stop, moment, you’re and over in my first sentence coincidentally. Sentence and coincidentally were an accident also. Not trying to be snarky, just pointing out how often we use the same vowels and vowel sounds.

---

Please read note above. Sonics and rhythm are one type of tool used in poetry and are used where appropriate. It is not needed in all situations and not in this one.

Are you suggesting this example has no rhythm?

Not one that stands out from normal speech

But rhythm exists - just not applied with forethought. And I’d argue that rhythm must exist in any English sentence, because English is an accentual-syllabic language - metrical - and on it’s basic level rhythm is based on the syllabic word overlying the accent of a normally iambic foot.

Where rowens said he improvises and feels the beats as he writes them, I prefer to break down a prose draft of what I have written, break it into lines of similar length, then look at the meter. I may or may not maintain the same meter, strict or otherwise, throughout a poem - I normally do - but then I begin looking for words which play with or against the beat. Meter is a time signature. A kick drum keeps the beat, but the drummer can vary rhythms according to the beat on his other drums. Poetry is the same.

If I constantly place word stress on the accent of the meter, the base rhythm will get predictable and tiresome. Meter has two levels of ‘stress’ (accented or unaccented) but rhythm can have more. And thats before we begin considering caesura, enjambment , cadence- all the elements of sound against time.

Once I have the base rhythm, I begin considering words for their sounds, secondary meanings to support an analogy or allegory, etc.

---

I use this technique in free verse as well, though maintain a meter or line length is less important, it still helps me establish a base rhythm.

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This is not meant to imply word pronunciation does not affect rhythm - it does. Just getting back to the basic question about how you personally construct a rhythm.

---

So churinga, I’d modify you’re statement about sounds creating rhythm. I’d word it as sounds affect rhythm.

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They also affect intonation, or the melody of a line, if you will.

[churinga]

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

[billy]

i just write, fuck the torturing of myself over diphthongs and co. if i'm writing with a form then i'll stay within a form and perhaps change it a little depending how i feel. i don't have any preconceptions when i start to write. from birth i've generally been more of a twat than a poet. i stick to what i know, shits and giggles and if it's got meter all well and good. i saw mention of the sonnet form mentioned, i did few of those and i never connected them as such to love, i did keep meter and rhyme, the opening and the closing and the couplet but i general i stopped the love poems years ago. marriage does that to a man i think in many respects i'm with you on this one rowens.

my definition of prose and poetry depends on the craft of poetics: understanding how the English language is constructed, meter, rhythm, rhetorical devices, etc.

mine doesn't and if it ever did i'd have never started a poem. i write because i enjoy it, fuck how the english language works, okay i'm not into yoda speak but that's where it ends for me. i love rowens, [most of it anyway] work mainly because it's free. because when i see it i see him clearing his lungs and singing soprano. he writes how he sees and thinks. he doesn't add corners or think about how he's always written this way. he just writes. when people write like that it's warm and fuzzy. leanne knew form better than anyone i knew but she too wrote spontaneously. the meter was in her heart not her head. that's how i'd like to be but i'm not and i've yet to truly see anyone here or anywhere else apart some well renowned poets other than her. bukowski couldn't give a flying fuck about restrictions, he made his own rules and they worked. he spoke and wrote from the heart and the beer bottle. if he wrote a poem on the discussion of poetics it would be titled bollox. not having a go at anyone just saying how poetics affect me...they don't

I'm primarily improvisational. I read a lot, I think a lot, I go out and have different kinds of experiences, I absorb atmospheres in my room at night or day or walking around outside, then I sit down and write, and everything that needs to coalesces. I spent most of my life feeding on my own stomach, when I met up with the educated world, I bent it all to my will. My needs and desires. I feel spaces for rhythm and have a hunger to fill them, and feel the beats physically as I write them. I make standard-traditional angles and obtuse angles on the page and in the air. It's sex and death and rearrangements, transfigurations of organisms. Literally and figuratively. It's obvious I don't give a lot of thought to craftmanship.

[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.

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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.

[rowens]

I knew a guy who whenever he met someone who played guitar, he'd say they should get together and talk shop. I don't like talking shop because I didn't like him. My resentment drives me as much as my love. I learn all I can the better to ignore things should they sneak up on me. It's easier to accept Ignorance the more you come in contact with everything there is to come in contact with. I ignore it all, and what comes comes. As natural use of language creates things, things are named. Then they can be classified. Then they can be utilized. People can know what they're doing then, and other people can see that they're doing something and what that is. What it is. I like the part of horror movies when nobody, including the watcher, knows what's going on, only that something's going on. That's how I live my life. Only I like to know that others know things so I can travel through their context. The better to get by, like Mad Max, between and when there are no contexts.