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- Title
On and Off the Grid.
- Authors
Voigt, Ellen Bryant
- Abstract
This essay examines the syntax in English-language poetry. Musicologist Robert Jourdain describes the two rhythmic systems at work in music by stating that vocal rhythm organizes musical time on the large scale, and instrumental rhythm organizes it on the small scale. For Robert Frost, a fixed grid in poetry was paramount, there was only the choice of two metres, strict iambic and loose iambic. This shows the temperament behind his famous put-down that free verse is like playing tennis without a net. Stanley Kunitz and D. H. Lawrence would no doubt agree with Frost that the living part of a poem is in the intonation entangled somehow in the syntax idiom and meaning of a sentence. Meanwhile, it is important to emphasize that even when the grid is more pronounced, more regular and overt and predictable even in Frost's own heavily iambic verse, poetry in English can only approximate the quantifiable, numerical meter of music. While musical meter controls duration of individual notes, the language comprises syllables of hugely variable weight and worth, due to its blend of polysyllabic Latinate words and Teutonic monosyllables, and its irregular verbs and Greek prefixes.
- Subjects
POETRY (Literary form); ENGLISH language; MUSIC; FROST, Robert, 1874-1963; FREE verse; 21ST century (Literary period)
- Publication
Kenyon Review, 2004, Vol 26, Issue 3, p139
- ISSN
0163-075X
- Publication type
Creative Nonfiction