Robin asked aobut Stevens' prosody and Michael mentioned that Robert Mezey
had done an analysis of Sunday Morning. IN an essay I wrote for a book on
the "Objectivist" poet Carl Rakosi, I discuss Stevens quite extensively in
regard to the dominant patterns of his meter, comparing his prosody to that
of Rakosi (a very rigorous formalist, who would no doubt be regarded by
Lind, et.al. as a "free-verser"), and then making some speculations as to
how these formal expressions enact fundamentally different epistemological
stances. Frank Parker had mentioned this essay a while back, and you can
find brief selections from it at the Academy of American Poets site under
the Rakosi entry (I think that's where it is). Otherwise, it's in CArl
Rakosi: Man and Poet, ed. by Michael Heller, published by National Poetry
Foundation. On Zukofsky, also mentioned by Robin, I have written (might as
well keep going here) an essay on his extraordinary and final 80 Flowers
(also discussed by Davenport in Geography of the Imagination, which someoen
mentioned), arguing that the form of these poems derives from the 8th
century lu-shih, whose prosodic trapeze apparatus makes most Western forms
seem like patty-cakes. I wonder how many of the "Expansionists" have
attempted dialogue with classical Chinese prosody?
Kent
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