Marcus Bales wrote:
> >>But counting syllables is meter. It's that way in French, too, isn't
> >> it?<<

On 3 Aug 2005 at 11:44, Richard Jeffrey Newman wrote:
> As I understand it, yes, counting syllables would constitute meter no
> differently than counting metrical feet, though that raises an interesting
> question, it seems to me: Are we talking about a straight counting of
> syllables with no regard to the number and pattern of long and short
> syllables in a line, or is there formal attention given to that as well?<

What difference? Meter is different in different languages, and with the
possible exception of ancient Hebrew I don't know of one that has no
meter whatever. Meter is what the native speakers of a language use to
distinguish poetry from prose.

Now, it seems to me, what you and others are saying is that in English
there either is, or there ought to be, no such distinction between poetry
and prose because you hold, if I understand you correctly, that anything
is poetry that anyone says is poetry, on the grounds that poetry is an
honorific, not a category of writing. Poetry might arise from washing
machine instructions or even from a random collection of words.

But my position is that poetry is not an honorific; it's not a way to
describe that fine excess that shimmers at the top of the best writing of
any kind. Poetry is simply metered language, while prose is unmetered
language.

Marcus




 If
> the latter, than the meter is much more complicated and, if the former, than
> you have a situation where there's a formal structure within which there is
> a lot of room for variation. Anyone here every tried writing syllabic verse
> in English? I've tried a couple of times and have only one that was
> successful in seven syllable lines, except for the last one, which is six:
>
> Going Somewhere Else
>
> Suggesting trees, a voice floats.
> The boy is looking. Over
> his shoulder, we see the road
> run past a barbed wire fence,
> but language I put between
> his lips turns his thoughts to the
> river, and we turn with him.
> A cymbal crash places rocks
> he climbs down to just inside
> the line where shadow becomes
> sunlight. Still playing, the man
> with the flute rises, gestures
> for the others to follow.
> At the back of the theater,
> hooded figures lock the doors.
> A sudden blue-green spotlight
> focused stage left. Time has passed.
> Books fall from the sky, snowflakes
> the young man catches on his
> tongue, and he his smiling,
> but the woman whose rhythms
> fill the melody's empty
> spaces lifts her hands: Nothing
> driving the song now but the
> need each note creates in us
> for the next one, and the next,
> till the orchestra fades and,
> center stage, I sit alone,
> sketching at this piano
> the hills I once imagined
> walking with you, twilight hills
> at once familiar and strange,
> as from the top of the Pentlands
> Edinburgh is all cities
> and one city. Hills where my
> companions-themselves composed
> partly of parts of me-are
> unaware, that with these notes
> they do not hear, on these keys
> that are not mine, I give them
> lives they have never lived.
>
> Edinburgh University, 1985-
> Jackson Heights, NY 1998
>
> Richard
>