would I were steadfast
Jan. 29th, 2007 03:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseI am deeply frustrated with poetry.
I'm working on Gerard Manley Hopkins right now for class, and while his philsophy is wack and his poetry is, um, dense, I see his point. He tried to create a verse-form that actually made sense for English, as opposed to our current set, borrowed from the Greeks. And oh man, I so hear that. English does not go quietly in to iambs.
Class last term sort of trashed me out on poetry. I've been trying to write, but I can't seem to turn my analytic brain off, and it criticizes everything so minutely that I never get anything done. I played with sonnets for a while last week, but iambic pentameter ug. I can never get to clean iambs, and my lines want to be eight syllables long. and I can't rhyme without looking like a dork.
So no sonnets, but I really really want form. Not rhyme, but rhythm. Because when you have form you can break it or disrupt it or slide it sideways, counterpoint and harmony. Shiny and interesting possibilities. Stuff that I really want in my arsenal. We played with a line of Keats today :"Bright star! Would I were steadfast as thou art", which we scanned out to a spondee, a trochee, an iamb, a trochee, and a spondee. Perfectly symmetrical, with the regular iamb at the center of the line. Gorgeous.
I want to do that. I want to understand not what prosody is but how it works. the effect of the trochee in blank verse. the emotional meanings of each part.
Thing is, I've been doing all this bitching and I know that all I really need is to write. Poetry, prose, fic. Whatever. I need to unblock myself and get the fire going. In that endeavor, I'm going to the library for a copy of Plato's Republic. I don't really ever want to touch it again, but my issues are demanding that I work through them in the form of fiction. Okay then.
I'm working on Gerard Manley Hopkins right now for class, and while his philsophy is wack and his poetry is, um, dense, I see his point. He tried to create a verse-form that actually made sense for English, as opposed to our current set, borrowed from the Greeks. And oh man, I so hear that. English does not go quietly in to iambs.
Class last term sort of trashed me out on poetry. I've been trying to write, but I can't seem to turn my analytic brain off, and it criticizes everything so minutely that I never get anything done. I played with sonnets for a while last week, but iambic pentameter ug. I can never get to clean iambs, and my lines want to be eight syllables long. and I can't rhyme without looking like a dork.
So no sonnets, but I really really want form. Not rhyme, but rhythm. Because when you have form you can break it or disrupt it or slide it sideways, counterpoint and harmony. Shiny and interesting possibilities. Stuff that I really want in my arsenal. We played with a line of Keats today :"Bright star! Would I were steadfast as thou art", which we scanned out to a spondee, a trochee, an iamb, a trochee, and a spondee. Perfectly symmetrical, with the regular iamb at the center of the line. Gorgeous.
I want to do that. I want to understand not what prosody is but how it works. the effect of the trochee in blank verse. the emotional meanings of each part.
Thing is, I've been doing all this bitching and I know that all I really need is to write. Poetry, prose, fic. Whatever. I need to unblock myself and get the fire going. In that endeavor, I'm going to the library for a copy of Plato's Republic. I don't really ever want to touch it again, but my issues are demanding that I work through them in the form of fiction. Okay then.
When I found this poem-challenge by keats,
Date: 2007-01-30 07:05 pm (UTC)And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet
Fettered, in spite of painéd loveliness,
Let us find out, if we must be constrained,
Sandals more interwoven and complete
To fit the naked foot of Poesy:
Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and see what may be gained
By ear industrious, and attention meet;
Misers of sound and syllable, no less
Than Midas of his coinage, let us be
Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown;
So, if we may not let the Muse be free,
She will be bound with garlands of her own
I considered hopkins to be answering it in his poetry (altho' also harking back to Skelton, who was doing some of the same thing back in the day...)
"Inversnaid" illumination
PS: Eight syllables...
Date: 2007-01-30 07:08 pm (UTC)Re: PS: Eight syllables...
Date: 2007-01-30 08:55 pm (UTC)