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It may be that Cambridge is just awash with people studying prosody, rhythm, metre and everything, almost always working on material written before 1900, but my own sense is that what might be more helpful would be more work on how to read and understand modern compositional forms that reflect the media of the printed page in relation to digital forms and compositional practices that have come to play an important part in modern poetry.... I recall Denise Riley telling me that some of her poems with long lines were working with the parameter of the size of the screen she was writing on: the screen and font were shaping the length of the line ... but from Emily Dickinson's page poetics to Olsonian composition in the expanded field of the typed page, into the widespread use of typewriters, xerox machines, laptops and now phones, concrete forms, dirty and clean, use of fonts and page space, the new sentence, the differences between different poetics of white space in lineation and page arrangement etc .... and how all those shake down when poetry is digitised and read on screens... at various stages I've contemplated writing a short history of white space in modern poetry from Emily Dickinson and Mallarme onwards.... so as well as neglecting the traditional musicalities of verse and poetry, along with the problems of free verse prosody, aren't we in a long period of neglecting the critical articulation of the page and associated digital forms that are very much part of the medium of modern poetry.... I think much of this is taken for granted by people who read a lot of modern poetry, but totally baffling, silly or nonsensical avant-gardism to people who don't.... Drew On 16/01/2018 09:32, Tilla Brading wrote: > seconded > > > Tilla Brading > > > > On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 6:18 PM, Pierre Joris <[log in to unmask] > <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote: > > Well said, Drew! > > & maybe we need new/different ways of looking at meter/rhythm > today. Douglas Oliver had made a valiant attempt to do so in his > /Poetry and Narrative in Performance/. Don’t know if anybody has > followed up on that. > >> On Jan 12, 2018, at 10:03 AM, Drew Milne <[log in to unmask] >> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote: >> >> Traditional prosody is still taught in schools. Year after year I >> have to explain to students who have been taught some scansion at >> school that a song or ballad poem isn't in iambic pentameter, nor >> even in iambic tetrameter, and that a variable line of six, seven >> or eight syllables might just be a regular song or ballad stanza >> that isn't in classical feet. More sophisticated forms of >> prosody, Saintsbury versus Attridge etc, have been clogging up >> Cambridge practical criticism classes for years. I teach >> translations of metrical and nonmetrical psalms partly to plant >> the thought that there are different understandings of metre. >> There's more prosody taught in Cambridge English than Marxism or >> psychoanalysis. But because classical scansion is indeed >> essentially inaccurate and often misleading, the stresses and >> strains of English poetry tend to take second place to people >> tapping out binary patterns in search of feet. One more heave and >> we'll have done with ye olde classical clogs. Bring on the dance >> of the intellect. >> >> Drew >> >> >> On 12/01/2018 14:53, Jamie McKendrick wrote: >>> Just messing, Tim – but, whatever grain of truth could be found >>> in it, at least I’m being even-handedly dismissive! (I’ve been >>> reprimanded on the list before for that too.) >>> Still, I think there might be a topic here. Even as regards CW, >>> I’ve come across students struggling with advanced concepts of >>> avant-garde poetics who haven’t a clue about the traditional >>> basics, concepts of meter and rhythm that have informed more >>> than 500 years of poetry in English, not to mention other >>> languages. I realise that the vocabulary of scansion, imported >>> from classical literature, is off-putting and essentially >>> inaccurate for the stress-based patterns of English (rather than >>> vowel-length etc.), but it’s useful knowledge to have. Peter’s >>> lucid point as to why the metronome is a misleading image – Ez >>> of course knows this and is being rhetorical – would then be >>> more easily understood by students who encounter Pound’s >>> polemics. It’s stuff that used to be taught in school, and one >>> or two US professors in writing courses I’ve heard of apparently >>> taught metrics quite rigorously. Now I guess it’s considered as >>> irrelevant as life drawing in most art colleges. >>> Jamie >>> *From:* Tim Allen >>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]> >>> *Sent:* Friday, January 12, 2018 12:14 PM >>> *To:* [log in to unmask] >>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]> >>> *Subject:* Re: Metronome >>> A bit harsh Jamie. I'd say there is a part of the avant-garde >>> that is a bit deaf to rhythm while another part of it is very >>> much attuned to it. >>> On 11 Jan 2018, at 13:25, Jamie McKendrick wrote: >>> >>>> Eureka! A lack of interest in and an ignorance about rhythm: >>>> the one thing that unites the mainstream and the avant-garde. >> > >