From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Prose poem
> >That's interesting. What do you mean by "turn on the linebreak"?
>
> Well, I was playing off the meaning of 'verse,' but can also point you to
> comments such as Denise Levertov's essay on the line, which Phyllis Webb
> once talked to me & Stephen Scobie about at some length (that interview
> appeared in an early issue of Writing magazine, I can't remeber the
> number). There is a pause on the line break, & usually, perhaps always, a
> change of pitch. So that turn should count, but a lot of writers seem to
> ignore it, not to even notice that it's there, reading (or sounding) it as
> a run-on, with no play on the pause. Why bother, then? If it's just broken
> down prose you might as well write it out as prose...
Doug--
I've long heard Levertov's take on the end of a line being worth half of a
comma.
A reader whose own musical sense is atuned as such is Robert Creeley. I've
heard
some people read who almost put a hard stop at the end of their lines (very
annoying).
Likewise, I've heard poets run their lines on like prose. I prefer a nearly
im-
perceptable 'half-comma' turn at the end of a line and an honoring of space
between
stanzas in the spirit of the poem's rhythms. If, as Duncan said, poetry is
dance sitting
down, then stillness is counterpoint to motion (or as Miles Davis knew, it's
as much
what you don't play as it is what you do play).
However, my own preferences have gotten me into trouble when reading, say,
George
Oppen. It wasn't until I began to read his poetry as a run on that I began
to get the
whole of what he was doing. Which just goes to show no rule is hard and
fast.
> I don't need to
> hold back here
> in the union
>
> of forms
> Charles Olson
I love your Olson quote today!
best
:fp
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Frank Parker
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