Listees, posties, and all:
re Peter Riley's vision of verse as 'language subjected to number,
metre and rhyme', may I offer a slight variant? It is that verse
(or poetry) can be usefully regarded as 'patterned speech' -
insofarasmuchas whatever vocabulary you chose to employ it will
impact as conforming or differing from the standards of speech, and
that 'pattern' can be as rigid or flexible as you like.
Tight, obsessive patterns like rhyme (not native to English after
all) presumably reflect an aggressive and tightly organised regime
and/or a strictly maintained concept of 'self'. Less insistent
patterns give a sense of openness and experiment. Little verse is
truly 'free'. Walt Whitman depended on a re-use of Biblical cadence,
I'd say (unless he penetrated the mysteries of Ancient Egyptian
paralellism); and as for the subversive attempts by William Burroughs
to construct random effects, why, the odd thing is, quite interesting
patterns seem to emerge....
best
Bill
p.s. as to good and bad verse, that is not ultimately
capable of being established?
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