Blog321
Daily Notes on Poetry & Related Matters

18 December 2004. I played some more with the poem I've so far posted two versions of. Haven't been about to make anything good out of it yet. Meanwhile, a minor thought occurred to me after Michael Snider opined in a New-Poetry post that avoiding inversions in rhymed metrical verse is easy. I say that not only is it not easy to avoid inversions or the equivalent in rhymed metrical verse, but that the difficulty of doing so (for pay-offs much smaller than one can get with better devices) is a main reason that serious poets rarely compose such verse. By "equivalent," I mean going out of meter, near-rhymes, grammatical solecisms like wrong verb tense or number, and obvious padding. King Shakespeare does such things all the time (even if we agree that some of the rhymes he made that sound poor to us were correct in his time). Sometime, I'll compile some examples of his inversions and inversion-equivalents. Take my word for it, though, there are more than a few.








COMMENTS

Use the box below to respond to this entry. Negative feedback is especially welcome. It will get to me anonymously, so you need have no fear it will result in my using my immense influence to wreck your literary career, if you have one. On the other hand, if you want to hear back, please include your e.mail address with your message.    --Bob


Click SEND to mail response. You will then be shown a copy of what you sent.
To return here, click BACK, which should be at the top of the screen, to the far left.
(Note: it may take a day or several days for your comment to appear at my blog.)



Previous Entry

Next Entry

Blog Home-Page

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1