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Point taken, dave. I didn't quite mean to suggest that extempore poetry doesn't exist, more that it's not part of the English (language) *tradition. One problem is that it's ephemeral -- if you extemporise a poem, unless it's promptly written down afterwards (or tape-recorded), it's lost. This would apply even, I'd guess, to orally composed poetry, which would have to be repeated by the composer several times, so no longer extemporary, before it was "fixed". In contrast, it seems to be, or at least is presented in literary texts as, part of both the Old Irish/Welsh and Norse/Scandinavian literary traditions. Perhaps it's a case that the more demanding and constrained the poetic norms are, the more there's a counter-movement towards extemporisation, or at least celebrating extemporisation. Dunno. Robin ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Monday, June 29, 2009 9:14 PM Subject: Re: Apology for swords > Rob > When I was young in Brum there was a mentally and physically disabled chap > called Mark who used to wander about the streets talking to anyone who'd > listen in rhyming couplets. They were certainly his own and extemporised. > He was a near dwarf with discoloured looking skin and a huge > disproportionate head. It was hard to say whether he was consciously > making > the rhymes, the patter seemed to be his verbal consciousness, I got the > impression he was his own automatic voice.The verses were often about a > person who was strange and suffered. But this person, himself, was quite > clearly someone else to his narratives. Unlike rappers, they weren't > ego-centred, the unpleasantness of much rap is possibly uncomfortably > close > to a truth about the origins of poetry, but one can travel far from a > starting point, yes?