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