Hi Annie
Thanks very much for your long and careful post. I should say that anyone
familiar with Annie's practice would know that she is far from a
neo-formalist nazi, and should not assume that her knowledge of prosody
means anything prescriptive.
Perhaps it's kind of nerdy to admit it, like being fascinated by the engines
of cars, but metrical play has from the beginning been a major part of my
own practice. The first poem I remember consciously writing at ten was a
Shakespearean sonnet, written because the children's encyclopaedia I had
explained what it was and I was fascinated to try it out for myself. After
that I spent years copying every poet who caught my fancy or imagination,
from Alfred Noyes to Lewis Carroll to Eliot (I admired extravagantly
wherever I looked as a child). Part of the fun of writing fantasy novels is
that I get to return to those childhood pleasures of formal rhyme and metre
- recently I wrote several rubaiyatt a la Robert Fitzgerald, a blues song, a
ghazal and some cod Gilgamesh...
I don't bother much with rhyming otherwise in my poetry, I'm trying to play
with other things, other kinds of expressiveness. But I'm totally with
Annie on the importance of prosody as a skill. Like all skills, it can be
learned, and the more skills you have, the wider your range of
expressiveness and the more rules you can break. It's part of the craft
Celan said should be taken for granted (like hygiene, said Celan...hmmm) -
Rimbaud, remember, won prizes for his Latin alexandrines before he smashed
French poetic convention.
Best
Alison
PS A general reminder to snip posts and to keep only what's relevant at the
bottom...
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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