Quite interested in this discussion. Conservative prosidists tend to claim
that syllabics are impossible in English because one cannot hear them in the
reading. I've been working on a long series of poems in syllabics for
fifteen years & in the process of writing I can compose lines of nine or
eleven or seven syllables usually without counting. In the case of this
sequence I mix even & odd numbers of syllabic lines, though odd numbers
predominate. Also, each poem is in two numbered parts, with the pattern
repeated in the second part; all 56 poems so far, in fact, use the same
pattern of lines. Mainly, I find the formal constraints an aid to invention
& also a limit against which to press. Much of my poetry tends toward the
discursive, but in this sequence I am pressed toward something more lyric, I
think.
jd
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Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts, 5750
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
315.268.3967
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http://web.northnet.org/duemer
http://www.grammarbitch.com/ppp/index.html
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