At 10:29 PM +0100 1/30/03, Trevor Joyce wrote:
>So: why bother breaking lines? What can verse do that prose can't? I have my
>own notions, but I'd be interested to know what others think, as I suspect
>I'm more opinionated than lucid.
I'm really not sure. There's an interesting moment (or moments) in
one of O'Hara's reviews of - Rothko? Pollock? I'm stretching my
memory - I think it's one of Pollock's autumnal lavender things -
where he seems to run out of prosaic language and segues into poetry.
Which might illustrate a particular turning point, a desire for a
different expression of responsiveness or meaning.
I think David's correct on the rhythms of "active silence" (like that
phrase!) A certain kind of breathing, perhaps. A movement, like Paz
says, from silence to silence.
One of the reasons I like writing prose is that you can put all sorts
of things into it - it's populous, crowded, argumentative, jostling,
inclusive - and one of the things I like about poetry is that you can
leave all sorts of things out of it. But of course you can equally
switch things around. For instance, Whitman's Song of Myself as
compared to Beckett's Trilogy...
Best
A
--
Alison Croggon
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