On 3 Aug 2005 at 8:27, Douglas Barbour wrote:
> I've just been reminded of Hugh Kenner's take on Williams's famous
> little poem about the red wheelbarrow, in which he sets it as prose to
> demonstrate that it simply is not the same.
> 'Try it over in any voice you like,' notes Kenner, 'it is impossible.
> ... To whom might the sentence be spoken, for what purpose? ... Not
> only is what the sentence says banal, if you heard someone say it you'd
> wince. But hammered on the typewriter into a *thing made*, and this
> without displacing a single word except typographically, the sixteen
> words exist in a different zone altogether, a zone remote from the
> world of sayers and sayings' (Homemade World 60) [this in Perloff,
> Differentials xxix]
> That, I think, is one of the points you're making. Well, it's one of
> the ones I am....
I disagree. The sixteen words work fine as a journal entry or diary entry
or as a sketch or a scene-setting introduction. But the question is
whether
The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
is in meter or not. I see two beats in the first line and one in the second,
repeated consistently throughout. If 4 beats then three is meter, why
can't two then one be meter too?
Marcus
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