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About Me Member Structural Poet TheNathanator17/Male/United States Recent Activity Deviant for 5 Years
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Poetic Ponderances

Wed Nov 30, 2005, 2:09 PM
A wonderful poem that I discovered, it's almost depressing how good it is. This is the way I want to write: (sorry I dont' know the title...)

I saw from the beach, when the morning was shining,
A bark o’er the waters move gloriously on;
I came when the sun o’er that beach was declining,
The bark was still there, but the waters were gone.

And such is the fate of our life’s early promise,
So passing the spring-tide of joy we have known;
Each wave, that we dance on at morning, ebbs from us,
And leaves us, at eve, on the bleak shore alone.

Ne’er tell me of glories, serenely adorning
The close of our day, the calm eve of our night; --
Give me back, give me back the wild freshness of Morning,
Her clouds and her tears are worth Evening’s best light.

By Thomas Moore
---

And another that hits the spot:
Love Lost

Who wins his Love shall lose her,
Who loses her shall gain,
For still the spirit woos her,
A soul without a stain;
And Memory still pursues her
With longings not in vain!

Oh, Happier he who gains not
The Love some seem to gain:
The joy that custom stains not
Shall still with him remain,
The loveliness that wanes not,
The Love that ne’er can wane.

In dreams she grows not older
The lands of Dream among,
Though all the world wax colder,
Though all the songs be sung,
In dreams doth he behold her
Still fair and kind and young.

by Andrew Lang
---


POETIC PONDERANCES

Lately I've been thinking about a concept which I've termed "metrical line-end expectancy". Which is to say that the reader knows when a line should come to an end, therefore it's important for the poet to be able to take advantage of that. Music sticks to bars which are the equivalent of our pentameter/tetrameter/trimeter/etc, and it's my opinion that when we spill over those "bars" in our writing (enjambment) it can sometimes be to the detriment of the music of our verse. Ever noticed how lines tend to end at the end of a line? meaning a coma or a period will end up at the end of a line? in my opinion that's because we think in terms of the meter we're writing in, and when we enjamb our lines excessively we loose the music.
For instance, the opening of Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey has always driven me mad:
"FIVE years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur. --Once again..."

I expect the line to end at "mountain-springs" but it spills over. Call it effect! Call it the "soft inland murmur" being heard in the poetry! it offends my ears, though I can bear it in this example.

Enjambment happens when we end a line to early in a line, and then try and fill up the space that's left. In my opinion the only way to do it in a manner which is not offensive to the ear is to continue to play to the ear, and not the line. Which is to say, if your words have naturally fallen short of a complete pentameter line so that you need a few additional feet to finish the line, the line you create should simply be an offset pentameter line (a pentameter line that flows between two lines). Instead of worrying about finishing the line where the line ends, continue to write pentameter between lines - thus the metrical expectancy will be preserved. Though visually you will try to maintain the syllables of each pentameter line so they all end neatly on the page, the ear can't hear the end of an enjambed line, it's strictly visual. But the ear can hear a pentameter line even if it flows between two lines because of the metrical line end expectancy idea I've been talking about. And this can be used to great effect.
What got me to thinking about all that was when I was writing "Words cannot be had" because I was running into problems with what my ears hear, as opposed to my eyes see.

I've also had trouble before with line end expectancy in a different way. Ever noticed how the ear expects a pentameter line to be followed by a pentameter line, there's nothing else that you expect to follow it (except maybe an alexandrine, but even then they usually mount up to a musical disappointment in verse). The same is not true for a tetrameter line, which can just as easily be alternated with a trimeter line as it can be with another tetrameter line. The two are almost inter changable, and it's noteworthy to point out that our Common Meter (the meter of hymns and of dickinson) is alternating tetrameter and trimeter, our Long Meter (another 'common' meter of hymns) is stricly tetrameter, and our Short Meter is Tri/Tri/Tetra/Tri.
In writing "Cyclical earth" (and I'm really sorry that I have to use examples of my own writing as opposed to published work, but I suppose the only way to really learn about poetry is to write it and expereince it) I ran into a problem with my ears vs. my eyes. To quote the first stanza:
"If sweat were blood, today I died
what with the summer heat. Outside
the humid air felt stale and dead;
the only dampness: sweat and blood."
The second line is trimeter, but I've forced it to be tetrameter by creating an enjambed line (and not following my own advice about listening to my ears). What I hear is a tetrameter line followed by a trimeter line followed by a pentameter line, but that's not what I want to be heard, I want the tetrameter to be heard, but metrical line end expectancy will have it so that the ears overrule the eyes. However, I do believe that we poets could take advantage of both line end expectany and where our lines actually end to create intricate rhyming patterns in our poetry. The first two stanzas of "Cyclical Earth" follow a pattern of rhymes that fall both where the ear hears the trimeter line end and where the eye sees or hears the tetrameter line end.
---

Also, lately I've been really impressed with the versatility of the paeonic foot. Writing accentually the paeon can shift and stretch and bend in all sorts of ways; it can become anapestic or even iambic pretty easily. So substitutions are many. In accentual verse, being able to be flexible without throwing the beat of the poem out of the window is important, and the paeon offers a great deal of flexibility. (I apologized to all you slaving syllable counters out there!)
---

So there you have it, some poetic ponderances. Hope you enjoyed and got through that. :D

deviantID

Devious Info

  • Current Residence: Columbus, OH
  • Interests: Poetry, writing, unicycling, juggling, dancing, fixed gear bikes
  • Favourite movie: Amelie, TheTangoLesson, CreatureComforts, WallaceAndGromit, Rozencrautz&GuildensturnAreDead
  • Favourite band or musician: Orbital, Cake, Chumbawamba, fenster, Blue man group, Breakbeat era
  • Favourite genre of music: Techno, Alternative rock, tango, electronica and dance
  • Favourite artist: Sandy Skougland, John Currin
  • Favourite poet or writer: Lewis Carol, Douglas Adams, Wordsworth, Coleridge, romantics, ee Cummings
  • Favourite game: Thief, Woms Armagedon, apples to apples, roborally
  • Tools of the Trade: a walk in the park, a quiet moment, a pen, some paper and a poetic deluge.

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Comments


:iconb1gfan:
:) you have a very interesting gallery Nathan...:D
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:iconinfrunitas:
And my favorite structured artist has yet to return. Who shall I draw my inspiration from? Honeysuckles take Way too long!

Hope all is well

--
To twist one purest cause
Into an honest verse,
Itself, a call to angels.
The saddened lips of song that
Kiss away our innocence
From the vile mundane.
~justb
:iconinfrunitas:
Hey bud, hope the world's treating you well. If not, lets go rough it up a bit!

--
To twist one purest cause
Into an honest verse,
Itself, a call to angels.
The saddened lips of song that
Kiss away our innocence
From the vile mundane.
~justb

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