Keston--

Do any poets here care very particularly about the syllabic regularity
(or exact irregularity) of their own work?

As one who does, the metrics keen the ear forward, lead to the
indescribable breadth of thought and emotion which can translate down
after the poem. Simon Perchik uses the metrics to crack the reader out
of their pre-reading condition, to accultivate a careful reader. Spencer
Selby forces the image upon the mind through the re-iteration,
syllabically, of poem sections so they metaphorically correspond to each
other. Even an untrained can walk away noticing the relation.

As for mine, I use syllabics as determinative of the emotion to convey
to the reader / speaker, to shift pacing moves in rhythm, from fast to
slow and back, as the lash of a poem does violence upon the reader, in
attemptation of yanking them in emotionally, through the yoke of "you"
combined with the variant breath and pacing of the line. The underscore
of rhythm is only one of the units adding (or purposely detracting from)
to the indescribeable part of what is imparted upon a reader. Another is
the sound map or scape of the piece. Not only the use of monotone single
beat words for
slowing and speeding but the re-iteration of glottal, gutteral, rising,
lowering sounds in the poem in combination with the actual vowel and
consonant sounds. The rise is when the tongue heads from the bottom of
the mouth to the top, the fall the opposite, the stop when the tongue is
not necessary in the process.

Take metrical craft to be the grand requisite? One fundamental aspects
of options available. There are too many folks without this element
trained into the fold. And unfolding the poem shows the (s)lack of
tools, a simplicity of unused realms, or complicity of spacement across
the ease and breadth of paper. So I do, but as such, wonder the loading
of yr question. As with some e-mail, tone is difficult to determine.

Be well

David Baratier



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