... miracle cannot always be turned into a method or a standard. Whitman's verse, if it can be so called, is not simply a cadenced prose, though quite a multitude of his lines only just rise above the prose rhythm. The difference is that there is a constant will to intensify the fall of the movement so that instead of the unobtrusive ictus of prose, we have a fall of the tread, almost a beat, and sometimes... little rough, but it will serve,—a gradation which is very instructive. First we have a movement which just manages to be other than prose movement, but yet is full of the memory of a certain kind of prose rhythm. Here the first defect is that the ear is sometimes irritated, sometimes disappointed and baulked by a divided demand, memory or expectation, hears always the prose suggestion behind pursuing and ...
... we take Shakespeare's prose in a well-known passage, we shall find the same law of quantitative rhythm automatically arranging his word-movement— Page 343 The measures of this prose rhythm find their units of order in word-groups and not as in poetry in metrical lines; the syllabic combinations which we call feet do not follow here any fixed sequence. In colloquial speech the sequence... passage from Stephen Spender,— There is a rhythm there, but it is not sufficiently gathered up or vivid and it is much more subdued than Eliot's towards the atony and flatness of ordinary prose rhythm. The last lines of the quotation from The Hollow Men could be used to describe with a painful accuracy most of this ametric poetry. Some kind of poetic shape is there but no realised and convincing ...
... and beauty, turned from a deliberately poetic Page 458 style to a colloquial tone and even to very flat writing; especially he turned away from poetic rhythm to a prose or half-prose rhythm or to no rhythm at all. Also, he weighed too much on thought and has lost the habit of intuitive sight; by turning emotion out of its intimate chamber in the house of Poetry, he has had to bring ...
... free verse. The object of free verse is to find a rhythm in which one can dispense with rhyme and the limitations of a fixed metre and yet have a poetic rhythm, not either a flat or an elevated prose rhythm cut up into lengths. I think this poem shows how it can be done. There is a true poetic rhythm, even a metrical beat, but without any fixity, pliant and varying with the curve or sweep of the thought ...
... out true poetic greatness and beauty, turned from a deliberately poetic style to a colloquial tone and even to very flat writing; especially he turned away from poetic rhythm to a prose or half-prose rhythm or to no rhythm at all. Also he has weighed too much on thought and has lost the habit of intuitive sight; by turning emotion out of its intimate chamber in the house of Poetry, he has had to bring ...
... carry it home to the inner consciousness and leave it with its place permanently there. There seems to be in this technique an unwillingness to get too far away from the characteristic manner of prose rhythm, an unwillingness either to soar or run, as if either would be an unbecoming and too ostentatious action—in three or four lines only the poet is just about to let himself go. Or perhaps there is ...
... syllable, economical of his means, not in the sense of a niggardly sparing, but of making the most of all its possibilities of sound. It is then that poetry gets farthest away from the method of prose-rhythm. Proserhythm aims characteristically at a general harmony in which the parts are subdued to get the tone of a total effect; even the sounds which give the support or the relief, yet to a great extent ...
... usual in this kind the style has no trace of any poetic turn or power but only a tamely excited and childlikely direct primitive sincerity and the rhythm is more aggressively prosaic than any honest prose rhythm could manage to be. C. L.'s "All was His!" is good in thought and conscientious in style but the rhythm is hopelessly stumbling and lame: but then perhaps it is written on some new metrical principle ...
... free verse. The object of free verse is to find a rhythm in which one can dispense with rhyme and the limitations of a fixed metre and yet have a poetic rhythm, not either a flat or an elevated prose rhythm cut up into lengths. I think this poem shows how it can be done. There is a true poetic rhythm, even a metrical beat, but without any fixity, pleasant and verging with the curve or sweep of the ...
... start of the second line contributes to the piercing effect of this proselike poetry. I have referred to a subtle power of rhythm and an intensity of form as differentiating such poetry from prose. Rhythm and form can be very open and evident at times and produce a poetry of marvellous word-music. This word-music is often produced with the help of Poetic Diction. But it does not necessarily depend ...
... out true poetic greatness and beauty, turned from a deliberately poetic style to a colloquial tone and even to very flat writing; especially he turned away from poetic rhythm to a prose or half-prose rhythm or to no rhythm at all. Also he has weighed too much on thought and has lost the habit of intuitive sight; by turning emotion out of its intimate chamber in the house of Poetry, he has had to ...
... significance of the feminine figure; but as the face was indistinct, how to know? "The footprints of time slowly fade away From the threshold of my life..." These 2 lines, you say, have a "prose rhythm". What's that? Can't be explained? How, can rhythm be explained? It is a matter of the ear, not of the intellect. Of course there are the technical elements, but you say you do not understand ...
... new poetry wants it upon earth; level with earth, the common human speech, the spoken tongues give the supreme intrinsic beauty of poetic cadence. The best poetry embodies the quintessence of prose-rhythm, its pure spontaneous and easy and felicitous movement. In English the hiatus between the poetic speech and prose is considerable, in French it is not so great, still the two were kept separate ...
... the new poetry wants it upon earth; level with earth, the common human speech, the spoken tongues give the supreme intrinsic beauty of poetic cadence. The best poetry embodies the quintessence of prose-rhythm, its pure spontaneous ¹God says to man: "L'humidité de votre âme, c'est ce qui vous reste de moi." Page 204 and easy and felicitous movement. In English the hiatus between ...
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