random bits

[cellio]

Overheard from a Diablo game: "...as long as you resurrect faster than they heal..." Um, yeah. :-)

I didn't know about the Netflix prize until siderea posted about it. Nifty! Improve their predictions by 10%; win a million bucks. It'll be interesting if the psychologist ends up beating the mathematicians.

I recently attended a religious service that had a lot of poetry in it. Or, at least, I assume it was poetry, but it made me wonder: surely modern (meterless, structureless) poetry is more than just doing things with white space, right? I mean, I understand a sonnet or a sestina at some level; I see the challenges that faced the author and can appreciate the artistry worked within those constraints. I have, thus far, been unable to develop such an appreciation for the choice of where to put a line break, except in the small subset of cases where that creates a change in meaning or creates an accrostic or some such. It feels, to me, sort of like composing music without concerning oneself with key, mode, or time signature. Obviously I'm missing something.

I was asked a few days ago to read a short torah portion this Shabbat. I wondered how long it would take me to learn (it's about 12 lines in the scroll). Answer, for first-order learning: 35 minutes. That was surprising. Of course, it will require daily reinforcement to keep it, but that's fine.

Note to self: I was talking with someone recently about what I look for in candiates for the laurel (the SCA's highest award for arts and sciences), and remembered that I had written about this a while back. Yup, still believe all that, almost six years later.

Comments

[tangerinpenguin.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that, in meterless, unrhymed poetry, you're supposed to be putting all the work into the words, the way they sound and the images they evoke. There may still be a cadence or shape to how the syllables are strung together, but not as rigidly.

In principle, a good sonnet writer is doing all of that as well - but (so the theory goes) the structure leads you into either the trap of using clever meter and rhyme as a mask for lazy wordsmithing, or the trap of butchering a beautiful turn of phrase to shoehorn it into structure.

As an unrepentant sonneteer myself, the expression of this to which I've been most sympathetic is the argument that, as learning exercises, you should start without rhyme and meter, and only start working with form once you've developed a foundation that doesn't include lazy habits.

[cellio]

Were I trying to learn to write poetry I might try a dual approach -- "free verse" to work on my wordsmithing and specific forms to keep me from thinking that's all there is to it. Giving people a blank canvas is great for freeing them from worries (about meter, etc), but there can be such a thing as too much freedom for the beginner. Maybe the answer is to start with forms that have very few rules, like haiku? (I am not saying that good haiku is easy, mind, but I'm talking about reaching competency, not being a star.)

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

It feels, to me, sort of like composing music without concerning oneself with key, mode, or time signature.

People do that too. :)
I'm mostly of the opinion that poetry implies verse implies meter. It doesn't have to be regular meter, but there needs to be some thought given to it.

[cellio]

People do that too. :)

Yup. This is not a virtue. :-)

[rjmccall.livejournal.com]

I use whitespace to convey rhythm and structure. Spacing indicates a pause; punctuation is also possible, but it's distracting, particularly when intent clashes with grammar. Each line carries roughly equal weight: a long line is a flurry of ideas, while a single word lingers. Indentation is separation and energy; choices here carry some internal logic to me, but I'm not quite sure how to explain it.

[cellio]

Each line carries roughly equal weight: a long line is a flurry of ideas, while a single word lingers.

Thanks; I hadn't thought to look at it that way!

[baron-steffan.livejournal.com]

By the definitions (such as tangerinpenguin's) of free verse, a lot of what appears to be prose is actually poetry. Or vice versa. Or both at the same time. In that category I would put a lot of the better fantasy I've read: Lord Dunsany (especially The King of Elfland's Daughter). Peter S. Beagle. Jack Vance (the Lyonesse cycle). Certainly the weightier bits of Tolkien (Silmarillion, The Children of Hurin).

---

BTW, IRT peerage requirements, I take exception to your characterization of Masters of Arms. And so, for that matter, does Corpora. I don't need to tell you that the orders are entirely equivalent except for the swearing-fealty thing. Yes, there are some MoA's who revel in being "Northern Army Thugs". But are you going to call Kobayashi Yutaka and Randall of the Dark unchivalrous?

The existence of MoA's is the fault of the SCA's hardwired notion of "Global Solutions for Local Problems". If, so long ago, the King of the West (was that Henrik I ?) had said to Richard the Short, when Richard couldn't "swear" due to mundane religious convictions, "Oh, okay, Rich. Then don't. ARISE SIR RICHARD!", we wouldn't need or have Masters of Arms today.

[cellio]

When reading apparently-unstructured poetry I find myself treating it as badly-formatted prose (which makes part of my brain ask why it wasn't just prose to begin with). I find that I can either do that or be hindered so much by the formatting that I can no longer appreciate the content. I guess poetry, like music and painting, is an area that can benefit from "X-appreciation" education.

It also took me the longest time to stop reading iambic pentameter with that duh-DUH duh-DUH rhythm and just read the text. (Ok, dialogue -- we're talking Shakespeare here.) So just because it has form doesn't mean I can leverage that form for reading. Less-blatant forms seem to work better for me; I can read a sestina and while one part of my brain is digesting the content/imagry, another is appreciating the form.

I responded to your other comment over on the other post. Thanks.