But counting syllables is meter. It's that way in French, too, isn't it?
Marcus
On 2 Aug 2005 at 14:35, Mark Weiss wrote:
> Right you are. And there is no meter in this sense in Spanish--it's simply not a consideration. The decima--the classic line--is 10 syllables, and nothing else.
>
> Mark
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Jeffrey Newman <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Aug 2, 2005 11:08 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: FW: any formalists in the crowd? -- thanks to Annie Finch!
>
> Marcus, you wrote:
>
> >>Meter comes in many forms. Is there really no meter in Spanish?
> Someone said there's no meter in Hebrew.<<
>
> This depends, does it not, on what you mean by meter? In music,
> traditionally anyway, and unless a piece has no time signature, the meter is
> set at the beginning of a piece, and it is either 4/4, 2/4, 3/8 or whatever.
> The composer may play with the boundaries of that meter in any number of
> ways by varying rhythm and phrasing, but the meter remains the same. And so,
> if by meter in poetry we mean the same kind of formal framework--i.e.,
> iambic pentameter, five iambic feet to a line--then, while I cannot speak
> for Spanish, I think it is safe to say that there is no meter in Biblical
> Hebrew poetry--I will not speak Hebrew poetry of other eras because I am not
> sure; but I am pretty sure I remember this about the poetry of the Hebrew
> Bible--just as there is no meter in Walt Whitman. This does not mean there
> is no rhythm and it does not mean that Whitman was not consciously using
> rhythm and playing with the ghost of meter in some of his poems, but if his
> poems were musical scores, my own sense is that they would have to be
> written without a time signature at the beginning.
>
> Richard
>
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