The melodics of long poems
Recent discussion of 'lyric' has tended to imply that rhythm, metre, and phonetic 'instrumentation' are of importance principally in the case of short poems. This essay argues that they are also fundamental to longer poems, which I consider as sites of collision between two diffe...
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| Published in | Textual practice Vol. 24; no. 4; pp. 607 - 621 |
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| Main Author | |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
Routledge
01.08.2010
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| Online Access | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Recent discussion of 'lyric' has tended to imply that rhythm, metre, and phonetic 'instrumentation' are of importance principally in the case of short poems. This essay argues that they are also fundamental to longer poems, which I consider as sites of collision between two different and often conflicting kinds of thinking: the thinking which poets do as 'authors', when they plan stories, arguments, and so on; and the thinking which poets do as verse thinkers, when they make working lines of verse. I argue, with detailed reference to William Collins's The Passions, and with briefer accounts of some longer works, that the best long poems develop, ramify, and exacerbate such conflicts rather than subduing them. What remains the principal model for discussing verse thinking, that of verbal mimesis, is shown to be of limited use in the case of long poems. (Author abstract) |
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| Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 |
| ISSN: | 0950-236X 1470-1308 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/0950236X.2010.499647 |