In response to my question:
> 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?<
Marcus asked:
>>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.<<
The distinction I was making, between a syllabic meter that merely counts
syllables and one that also pays attention to the syllabic value--long vs.
short, say, or whatever value might hold in a given language--was not
between one type of syllabic being meter and the other not being meter, but
rather, and simply, that they are two different kinds of syllabic meter.
And, as I remember correctly, this distinction does exist between different
languages.
>>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.<<
I did not say this, nor do I believe it. I do think, however, that there has
been some confusion in this discussion between meter and rhythm and between
meter and other patterns of language that can be used to organize language
into poetry. Rhyme, for example, which is one way that native speakers of a
language where rhyme functions distinguish poetry from prose, is not meter,
nor, say, is alliteration. If I remember correctly Anglo-Saxon verse counted
both stresses per line and alliterations; together, I would argue, they
constitute a meter; alliteration by itself does not, but that does not mean
that the conscious use of alliteration to create certain kinds of sonic
effects in language is not one of the ways in which language is organized
into poetry.
>>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.<<
I largely agree with you, Marcus, in something you said in another post,
that poetry is primarily rhetoric, it is a way of organizing language,
though I would argue that this kind of organization produces a very
different kind of "shimmer" than prose. I think, though, that you are not
using the term meter accurately. Really what you are talking about is a kind
of sonic structuring of which rhythm and meter are only two components.
Richard
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