You have been Versified

Textkit Community Open Board
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All this Versifying makes me ask a simple question to myself: what is the point of this? If the Romans copied Greeks then is it natural to require that any Latin poem be in a rigid verse which often causes people to restrict their expression to a set order. I know the slight freedom in cases, elision, spondees for dactyls etc. but why must you put a strong caesura in the third foot? And what if you have an extremely sweet word order and rhythm, then you have to ravage it in order to be ‘right’.
People say that there is a rhythm and this may be the case, but could there be better rhythms made by some guy who is free to do so? Verse is harder by far because it is restricted but it requires but tweaking, and too often the clouding of expression in order to ‘construct ton dactylon in the fifth foot pass me the broccoli timothy!’ or whatever. It’s like a pair of tight school trousers that you have to wear, you can’t undo the zip or fart because you have to be polite in school. What I’m saying is that I do that anyway, and it should be respected. benissimus wrote his couplet and for a demented kid it really sucked timothy’s broccoli. Being frank not nice, I know that he can write really well and has something special to give, but whiteoctave has fitted his trousers too tight.

I think Verse that is fine, but why are poems which do not have a specified metrical scheme not seen as poems at all?

That’s my admittedly ignorant 2 Vatican lira.

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I can’t give you an answer but I enjoyed reading your rant. :smiley:

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It is fun and expressive.

If the Romans copied Greeks then is it natural to require that any Latin poem be in a rigid verse which often causes people to restrict their expression to a set order. I know the slight freedom in cases, elision, spondees for dactyls etc. but why > must > you put a strong caesura in the third foot? And what if you have an extremely sweet word order and rhythm, then you have to ravage it in order to be ‘right’.

If you want to say things outright and without pattern then you write in prose. I never understand why people today wish to write pretty prose and call it poetry even though it meets none of the criteria for being poetry.

People say that there is a rhythm and this may be the case, but could there be better rhythms made by some guy who is free to do so? Verse is harder by far because it is restricted but it requires but tweaking, and too often the clouding of expression in order to ‘construct ton dactylon in the fifth foot pass me the broccoli timothy!’ or whatever. It’s like a pair of tight school trousers that you have to wear, you can’t undo the zip or fart because you have to be polite in school. What I’m saying is that I do that anyway, and it should be respected.

When you become a poet you can construct whatever meters you want.

benissimus wrote his couplet and for a demented kid it really sucked timothy’s broccoli. Being frank

Perhaps, but it was my first and I have yet to see you try. I am not sure if you are even able to adhere to a rule, but nonetheless I have yet to see you try to compose one.

I think Verse that is fine, but why are poems which do not have a specified metrical scheme not seen as poems at all?

Because they are indistinguishable from prose? Maybe not, give an example.

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I am an avid defender of verse poetry. With very few exceptions, actual poetry has not been written in English for about a hundred years.

Still, I understand Episcopus’s argument (or perhaps I might if I had a better grasp of either Greek or Latin verse). As Benissimus noted, once having mastered the set forms of poetry, then one may invent his own forms of verse which seem to suit his own personal speech much better.

Lord Byron is a great example of this. While I was composing sonnets, I found that I would often prefer four feet instead of five, that it seemed to fit much more musically for English (and indeed, many contemporary songs inadvertantly take this meter). So I began to write in iambic tetrameter instead, making my own kinds of verse. Then I discovered Byron’s works, and found that he had beaten me to it. In any case, Byron was definitely one of the first to experiment heavily with non-standard forms of verse. And he has thusly found his place quite admirably in history.

To use a cliché, Episcopus, “lets see you do better!” :wink: Really, outdo the ancients. Then you shall find your own admirable place in history.

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If your word order cannot be sullied, then write prose.

If the precise significance cannot be diluted, then write prose.

If we look at, say, the Greek Anthology we see very peculiar sentiments expressed in verse. Some are utterly banal. But poetry is only partly about meaning. It’s also about turning a verbal message into a work of art.

Watkins quoting Jakobson, “[t]he essential characteristic of verse … is that ‘equivalence is promoted to the constitutive device of the sequence.’” Now this is possibly one of the densest sentences I’ve ever encountered in prose, but means basically that equivalences are repeated; that is, similar patterns of stress, syllable length, phonetic figurations, words or even grammatical constructions are used to set apart poetic speaking by repetition.

The point of poetry (at least until recently) is that the use of language is not like the language we use day-to-day.

Classical Greek and Latin poetry do not (usually) rhyme. But the poets had a sensitive ear to sound. Here are two lines of Hesiod. Ignore the meaning for the moment. I capitalize similar sounds:

Kai Kerameus Keramei KoTeei Kai TeKToni TeKton
Kai PToKHos PToKHoi PHTHoneei Kai aoidos aoidoi.

Read that out loud. Note the effect when you hit the last two words, the sudden stream of vowels.

In preliterate (or rarely literate) societies such equivalences promoted to the sequence are striking. The message, decorated, is also much easier to remember. A lot of pop music still rhymes and scans for just this reason, and is why the tritest of lines can lodge in the brain.

So, I’m probably not doing a very good job of explaining why you might want to do this now, but I’m trying to hint at why it might once have been so popular. (I see on preview that Lucus Eques has touched on this a bit, too).

I am sensitive to the phonetic qualities of language. I was once sternly scolded (st-rnl sc-ld) by a philosophy prof. for an alliterative phrase I let get out of control (“that French Fraud Foucault,” in this case, “fraud” being libelous). In certain kinds of writing I’ll rework a sentence if I don’t like the vowel sequencing. (EDIT: My last elegiacs contained the phrase muthon AEIsAI AEI) This probably has much to do with why I continue in my study of Greek.

As for writing verse in these language now, I do it for fun. It is also instructive to confront some of the difficulties the poets I’m reading had to deal with.

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This might be slightly off topic:

In my opinion, the lack of poetry in modern English is due to the over-emphasis on rhyme.

From primary school, we are taught that a poem is something that rhymes. Rhythm and metre are never mentioned.

In high school we get onto the highly pretentious poetry of the English upper class; “poets” such as Keats, whose idea of poetry is to use long adjectives, convoluted sentences, and ramble on about nothing in particular. Hmmmmmmmmm. The whole purpose seems to be to show off the writer’s own cleverness, rather than to give the reader any enjoyment (or even to convey any actual information to the reader).

Maybe it’s just that not much can be done with the English language, in terms of metre. Perhaps the pitch accent is too loud, to frequent, or the abundance of particles and articles (which are never left off in poetry) tend to clog up the line. I doubt it though. I suspect something can be done with English. But at the moment I hate almost every poem I’ve ever read. (Maybe I’ll hate the Greek ones too, who knows?)


Buy the way, Episcopus, I love your writing style. It’s rambling, but completely followable (yep that’s a word now). Keep up the good work.

EDIT: Spelling

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What sort of music do you listen to?

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What about poems you’ve heard? The limerick is one of the strictest forms in English I can think of: rhyme; exact syllable counting and accent matching, unlike, say, the ubiquitous and fluid iambic pentameter.

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That’s absolutely correct. A rhyme is simply that. Rhyme is used in post-classical poetry (I’m thinking Dante onwards) in order to punctuate the most important beat in a line, often coming at the end (but not always). Rhyme is only the icing on the sweet, delicous cake of finely crafted meter and rhythm. Since all post people can see, or eat, is the icing, no wonder they get sick.

In high school we get onto the highly pretentious poetry of the English upper class; “poets” such as Keats, whose idea of poetry is to use long adjectives, convoluted sentences, and ramble on about nothing in particular. Hmmmmmmmmm. The whole purpose seems to be to show off the writer’s own cleverness, rather than to give the reader any enjoyment (or even to convey any actual information to the reader).

Uch, don’t get me started on Keats! What a lamo. You’re absolutely right.

Maybe it’s just that not much can be done with the English language, in terms of metre. Perhaps the pitch accent is too loud, to frequent, or the abundance of particles and articles (which are never left off in poetry) tend to clog up the line. I doubt it though. I suspect something can be done with English. But at the moment I hate almost every poem I’ve ever read. (Maybe I’ll hate the Greek ones too, who knows?)

Oh come now, what of Shakespeare? I’m not a terrible fan of his sonnets, but Hamlet’s speeches are verbal music.
“Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I …
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann’d;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing??
For Hecuba!”

English is actually much more flexible than most languages that I’m acquainted with, and is supreme for poetry with its enormously vast vocabularly, synonyms, homonyms, wordplays, and other potentials sorely lacked by most other tongues. In addition, the brevity and conciseness of individual words makes for an especially rapid communication, allowing for a reader to take his time while speaking, emphasizing the words gradually and most eloquently. English is superior among languages for many reasons, and poetry is one of them.

By the way, Episcopus, I love you writing style. It’s rambling, but completely > followable > (yep that’s a word now). Keep up the good work.

Fluid, amice; fluid. Don’t spring for the Germanic when you can savor the Romanesque. :wink:

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Hmmmm

On TextKit a question was asked
How every poem ever amassed
by meter or rhyme
all rigid in time
had meaning to many a lass.

The Romans, they copied the Greek
Those Romans counted their feet
with dactyls and spondees
and busy as queen bees
found poems a marvelous treat.

But words won’t stay in line
keep step, or meter, or rhyme
they come in a jumble
they thunder, they rumble
These are my thoughts; they’re mine!

But man is a wondrous beast
words but part of the feast
all courses the same
would make it quite tame
and give indigestion at least.

  • tim
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The concise answer is, largely heavy classical (if that’s the correct term), with a mix of some other stuff.


I think I overstated my position when said ‘I hate almost every poem’. I was thinking of my education at the time, and that was the inevitable result.

The fact, though, is that English-language poetry tends to be either pretentious nonsense or the not-technically-a-poem variety (Timothy and Shakespeare being among the exceptions :wink: ). And I can’t see any obvious reason why. (So I suggested a few possibilities.)

I don’t think I’ve heard many. I would have heard those that are in Shakespeare’s plays, but that’s about it.

The limerick, in my opinion, is a folksy form of verse, not suitable for conveying much information to the listener. That’s fine, but its uses are limited. As a result, most limericks are humorous, with many containing the word “Nantucket”.

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Have you read any Milton, Byron, Wordsworth or Eliot? (my four favourite English poets and all thus far unmentioned).

As regards the wider discussion here, I don’t think Episcopus’ complaint is fair. As Will rightly says elegant writing without any metrical circumscriptions is just prose written in an elevated style. Of course to us, beginners as we are, it seems a rather forced and occasionally artificial task to adhere to so many rules, but even the slightest glance at any skilled ancient poet shows the liberties that lie therein. The immense poetic variation created by all the great poets teamed with the overall metrical regularity is, in my view, one of the most laudable achievements of the ancient world.

Verse composition, ever since the early nineteenth century (perhaps earlier), has been criticised by some classicists and non-classicists alike. Lines of argument vary from a defeatist stance (e.g. “we can never even hope to get close to the beauty of Horace and Pindar, so why waste time with such a fruitless exercise”) to one of elitism (e.g. “verse composition is just an introspective and self-centered Brisith exercise in showing off”). Indeed against such charges nearly every collection of compositions (for which see the ever-growing list elsewhere in this forum) makes a defence in their preface. Indeed C. J. Ellingham wrote an article in 1935 for Greece & Rome called ‘Apology for the Practice of Latin Verse Composition’.

In spite of such complaints and in a world where classical studies are constantly drifting further and further away from their central lynch-pin, the classical languages, verse composition (along with its older sister prose) is one of the surest methods of bestowing the classicist with the tools and frame of mind to appreciate and understand fully the works of the ancients.

~D