BREATH - Poetry

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Metrical rhythm generally involves precise arrangements of stresses or syllables into repeated patterns called feet within a line. In Modern English verse the pattern of stresses primarily differentiate feet, so rhythm based on meter in Modern English is most often founded on the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables (alone or elided). [45] In the classical languages, on the other hand, while the metrical units are similar, vowel length rather than stresses define the meter. [46] Old English poetry used a metrical pattern involving varied numbers of syllables but a fixed number of strong stresses in each line. [47] Marianne Moore Although not a rhyming poem, Breath presents us with a deliberately bold choice of rhyme in its opening tercet: “What is death, / but a letting go / of breath?” The choice is bold for a contemporary writer, because “death” and “breath” have such a long history of cohabitation in Anglophone verse. Partly because the stanza encapsulates a question – rhetorical but not uninteresting – the familiar rhyme and its antithesis seem to make a fresh start. A Japanese writer of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, also known as Motekiyo. In 1961, after reading a version of Seami’s Yashima in Origin, Olson wrote Cid Corman, “If you find anyone who has translated Seami’s Autobiography literally & entirely I shd be obliged to hear of it. I remain convinced of its importance (reading his new play you published emphasizes again what a flawless poet he is” ( O/CC 2 : 173).

Until recently, the earliest examples of stressed poetry had been thought to be works composed by Romanos the Melodist ( fl. 6th century CE). However, Tim Whitmarsh writes that an inscribed Greek poem predated Romanos' stressed poetry. Different traditions and genres of poetry tend to use different meters, ranging from the Shakespearean iambic pentameter and the Homeric dactylic hexameter to the anapestic tetrameter used in many nursery rhymes. However, a number of variations to the established meter are common, both to provide emphasis or attention to a given foot or line and to avoid boring repetition. For example, the stress in a foot may be inverted, a caesura (or pause) may be added (sometimes in place of a foot or stress), or the final foot in a line may be given a feminine ending to soften it or be replaced by a spondee to emphasize it and create a hard stop. Some patterns (such as iambic pentameter) tend to be fairly regular, while other patterns, such as dactylic hexameter, tend to be highly irregular. [64] Regularity can vary between language. In addition, different patterns often develop distinctively in different languages, so that, for example, iambic tetrameter in Russian will generally reflect a regularity in the use of accents to reinforce the meter, which does not occur, or occurs to a much lesser extent, in English. [65] Alexander Pushkin

The irony is, from the machine has come one gain not yet sufficiently observed or used, but which leads directly on toward projective verse and its consequences. It is the advantage of the typewriter that, due to its rigidity and its space precisions, it can, for a poet, indicate exactly the breath, the pauses, the suspensions even of syllables, the juxtapositions even of parts of phrases, which he intends. For the first time the poet has the stave and the bar a musician has had. For the first time he can, without the convention of rime and meter, record the listening he has done to his own speech and by that one act indicate how he would want any reader, silently or otherwise, to voice his work.

Charles Olson’s influential manifesto, “Projective Verse,” was first published as a pamphlet, and then was quoted extensively in William Carlos Williams’ Autobiography (1951). The essay introduces his ideas of “composition by field” through projective or open verse, which is a continuation of the ideas of poets Ezra Pound, who asked poets to “compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome,” and William Carlos Williams, who proposed in 1948 that a poem be approached as a “field of action.” Olson’s projective verse focuses on “certain laws and possibilities of the breath, of the breathing of the man who writes as well as of his listenings.” One of the Noh plays translated by Pound, whose introductory note declares, “The play shows the relation of the early Noh to the God-dance” ( Ezra Pound: Translations [New York: New Directions, 1963], p. 308). There are a wide range of names for other types of feet, right up to a choriamb, a four syllable metric foot with a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables and closing with a stressed syllable. The choriamb is derived from some ancient Greek and Latin poetry. [55] Languages which use vowel length or intonation rather than or in addition to syllabic accents in determining meter, such as Ottoman Turkish or Vedic, often have concepts similar to the iamb and dactyl to describe common combinations of long and short sounds. [59]The poems in Cian Ferriter’s pamphlet (winner of the Fool for Poetry Chapbook) have a dark beauty and power. Emotionally compelling and rich with fresh and visually successful images, these poems often surprise us by making a shift from one place or time to another.’ Well, look no further – we’ve got a real treasure trove for you! Poetry can be fun and enjoyable to read, but did you know that reading poetry – either out loud or in your head – can actually benefit your life in many other ways too? Daring, deft and deeply affecting. Flamingo bops and shimmies with beauty, soars with all that we are.’ Goblin Market and Other Poems was the first collection of her poetry to be published, and it was the book that brought her to public attention. She went on to influence a range of later poets, including Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ford Madox Ford, and Elizabeth Jennings. Philip Larkin was an admirer, praising her ‘steely stoicism’. In the Western poetic tradition, meters are customarily grouped according to a characteristic metrical foot and the number of feet per line. [53] The number of metrical feet in a line are described using Greek terminology: tetrameter for four feet and hexameter for six feet, for example. [54] Thus, " iambic pentameter" is a meter comprising five feet per line, in which the predominant kind of foot is the " iamb". This metric system originated in ancient Greek poetry, and was used by poets such as Pindar and Sappho, and by the great tragedians of Athens. Similarly, " dactylic hexameter", comprises six feet per line, of which the dominant kind of foot is the " dactyl". Dactylic hexameter was the traditional meter of Greek epic poetry, the earliest extant examples of which are the works of Homer and Hesiod. [55] Iambic pentameter and dactylic hexameter were later used by a number of poets, including William Shakespeare and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, respectively. [56] The most common metrical feet in English are: [57] Homer: Roman bust, based on Greek original [58]

What we have suffered from, is manuscript, press, the removal of verse from its producer and its reproducer, the voice, a removal by one, by two removes from its place of origin and its destination. For the breath has a double meaning which latin had not yet lost.[15] The following three poems show a range of the vocabularies and images BE members used, to foreground themselves and their conditions:Each of these types of feet has a certain "feel," whether alone or in combination with other feet. The iamb, for example, is the most natural form of rhythm in the English language, and generally produces a subtle but stable verse. [60] Scanning meter can often show the basic or fundamental pattern underlying a verse, but does not show the varying degrees of stress, as well as the differing pitches and lengths of syllables. [61] Identified by Ralph Maud as René Nelli, who asks in Poésie overte poésie fermée, “Mais y a-t—il une poésie ouverte sur le reel et un poésie fermée sur les mots? —“But is there a poetry open on the real and a poetry closed on the words?” ( Olson’s Reading, pp. 84 and 277 n. 29).

Not present in the poem, but perhaps subtly evoked by its narrative, is a related, traditional poetic pairing: “womb” and “tomb”. The poem summons images of new life (children, birthdays, the balloons themselves with their “futtery teats”) and makes us aware of the contrast of active, nurturing life and final, entombed breaths.A Western cultural tradition (extending at least from Homer to Rilke) associates the production of poetry with inspiration – often by a Muse (either classical or contemporary), or through other (often canonised) poets' work which sets some kind of example or challenge. You’re probably aware of the advantages of practising mindfulness meditation on a daily basis, especially if you are a member of MindOwl’s online community. However, without a more specific focus when we first begin practicing, it can be difficult to keep your mind on the present moment. This is where tools like mindfulness poetry can come into play. You are not required to memorise anything like a mantra, instead, simply read meditative poems like the ones in this post and use them as prompts to direct your thoughts. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones.