No advice, but to say that for such as I this play tends to be
intuitive, & thought of in different terms. I suspect linguists, &
other such scholars, are the ones who would actively discuss such
things. Poets just do it....
I mean, do we then worry the emotive power of which vowels? If so, then
head back to Christian Bök's Eunois, where, indeed, the use of words
with only a single vowel for each section does have an emotional force,
but wholly constructed, & completely anti-lyrical...
Doug
On 17-Jul-06, at 5:18 PM, Max Richards wrote:
> I'm no further forward with Colin L Dean and Gamahucher Press, folks,
> but having
> idly emailed (about James's Turn of the Screw) a certain Dr Clayton
> Burns whose
> email to the editor of the tls was posted on his weblog, Dr Clayton
> has emailed
> me mentioning in the same breath, this:
>
> I am working on consonant and vowel gradation in poetry (there will
> have to be a revision of practical critical terms since even the power
> of
> symbolic chiasmus in "Sailing to Byzantium," "The Sick Rose," and
> "Design"
> goes unnoticed). The /nt/ and /nd/ gradation in Cummings' "The
> Cambridge
> ladies" complements the long "a" and ash gradation ("Cambridge ladies"
> and
> "moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy"). "After Apple-Picking"
> is a
> good example of "e" gradation, "The Sick Rose" of "i," "Ode to a
> Nightingale" of "o," and "Daddy" of "u." Since vowel gradation is so
> common
> in irregular verbs, you would have thought that by now critics would
> have
> noticed it in poetry. Shakespeare's sonnet 97 is a fascinating case.
> Clayton.
>
> Hmm, I do seem to remember chancing on vowel gradation in poetry
> discussions a
> while back, without my getting involved. I should like to email back
> at least a
> half-informed response...if anyone on PoetryEtc has advice...
>
> Max at Cooee in Melbourne
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au
>
>
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
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(780) 436 3320
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
Historical imagination gathers in the missing
Susan Howe
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