Taking this a different way. Someone or other defined poetry as "memorable
speech". Its origins seem in part to have been in fixing and preserving the
history and perceptions of the tribe by making them memorable - integrating
them into forms that made for memorability, using patterns and repetitions -
regular metre, rhyme, alliteration, repeated burdens and epithets, etc.
The poetry of the last half-century has - often for very good reasons,
tended to avoid these devices. So how much of it is actually memorable? I'd
be interested to know if anyone on the list has a free verse poem of
appreciable length learnt by heart. I know I haven't, though there are
plenty of rhyming poems that stick in my memory whether I want them to or
not
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George Simmers
Snakeskin Poetry Webzine is at
http://www.snakeskin.org.uk
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