It's one of my favourite poems. — Dawnstorm
I'm guessing it's that linebreaks slow you down, and you pay more attention to the words in themselves. — Dawnstorm
Your post seems more like an explanation of how the poet has used language to help us share that experience. — T Clark
Prosody matters enormously to the meaning of a poem. — Srap Tasmaner
How does that apply to this poem in particular? — T Clark
Thank you.Meaning tends to influence rhythm as much as the other way round, and different people might emphasise different words. A short Poem:
Danielle Hope, "The Mist at Night" (from The Poet's Voice, 1994):
[...]
It's one of my favourite poems. — Dawnstorm
“Hope” is the thing with feathers
BY EMILY DICKINSON
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me. — Poetry Foundation
"Prosody matters enormously to the meaning of a poem."
— Srap Tasmaner
How does that apply to this poem in particular? — T Clark
No, it's a jingly kind of pop. — Amity
No, it's a jingly kind of pop.
— Amity
The title and the first two lines of each stanza set us up for feeling slow and reflective. The last four lines run in the rhythm and rhyme of a limerick (minus the first line). The serene mood is undermined to make it, well, funny. If we had been asked to guess the author I would have said Wendy Cope.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=49670 — Cuthbert
Send me a slow news day,
a quiet, subdued day,
in which nothing much happens of note,
just the passing of time,
the consumption of wine,
and a re-run of Murder, She Wrote.
Grant me a no news day,
a spare-me-your-views day,
in which nothing much happens at all –
a few hours together,
some regional weather,
a day we can barely recall. — Brian Bilston
***The rhythm of the first two lines in each verse reminds me of something heard before.
Possibly a pop song or an advert...
Something along the lines of 'This is not just food. This is M&S food'.
No, it's a jingly kind of pop.
Ah, got it!
The Bangles...
It's just another manic Monday (Woah, woah)
I wish it was Sunday (Woah, woah)
'Cause that's my fun day (Woah, woah, woah, woah)
My I don't have to run day (Woah, woah)
It's just another manic Monday — Amity
For me the breaks serve as one beat pauses, and the breaks between stanzas serve as two beat pauses -- though reading it again I think I actually give a three beat pause for the second break. When I read it like this, it's like the way the speaker would have said it, had they been there -- sheepish, slow, guilty -- but not so guilty, because the prize really was just that nice. The first two stanzas read like that slow admission of guilt, but then right after asking forgiveness, by way of explaining himself, the speaker relishes in the memory of the stolen plums, and finishes with that memory. — Moliere
It makes me think of a close relationship you have with someone, and you know them so well that you know their favorite things -- and somehow along the way they kind of became your favorite things, too. So it sort of serves as a poem of familiarity and friendship, even though it's highlighting that part of familiarity where people are maybe too familiar. — Moliere
Williams I have some feel for, but the rhythm is the hardest part to analyze or explain. Reading "This is just to say" is like unfolding a bit of origami. He's very tricky about how the syntax is broken up over the lines; you unfold the next bit and it's satisfying but then you're not sure where to tug next and suddenly pop the next fold has come open. By the time you get to the very end and it's all laid out, you're not quite sure how you did it. Some of these little poems of his sound like they're sentences, sound urgently and insistently like sentences, but turn out not to be if you look carefully. Some of that is a commitment to spoken vernacular American, in which syntax can be a bit malleable, but some of it is the way lineation offers a competing structure, and that structure is in part rhythmic. — Srap Tasmaner
This has become one of my all-time favorite discussions. — T Clark
The following poem, “La tombe dit à la rose” (The Grave and the Rose), was written after the death of [Victor] Hugo’s daughter Léopoldine. In his grief, he wrote many poems on the subject, including “Demain, dès l’aube” and “À Villequier.” Her death took a huge toll on Hugo emotionally and was a subject in his work for years after the death.
Original Text:
La tombe dit à la rose :
– Des pleurs dont l’aube t’arrose
Que fais-tu, fleur des amours ?
La rose dit à la tombe :
– Que fais-tu de ce qui tombe
Dans ton gouffre ouvert toujours ?
La rose dit : – Tombeau sombre,
De ces pleurs je fais dans l’ombre
Un parfum d’ambre et de miel.
La tombe dit : – Fleur plaintive,
De chaque âme qui m’arrive
Je fais un ange du ciel !
[...]
English Translation:
Note that the structure is different in the English translation, so it’s not necessarily word-for-word. You’re going to have to study up on the missing vocab using your French dictionary to find those missing links. Since French and English poems are organized differently (remember all that talk about syllables and stress accents?), translations aren’t always simple.
The Grave said to the Rose,
“What of the dews of dawn,
Love’s flower, what end is theirs?”
“And what of spirits flown,
The souls whereon doth close
The tomb’s mouth unawares?”
The Rose said to the Grave.
The Rose said, “In the shade
From the dawn’s tears is made
A perfume faint and strange,
Amber and honey sweet.”
“And all the spirits fleet
Do suffer a sky-change,
More strangely than the dew,
To God’s own angels new,”
The Grave said to the Rose.
— 3 Short French Poems for Language Learning
Two Cures for Love
1. Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter.
2. The easy way: get to know him better.
— Wendy Cope
And many more.... — Cuthbert
I've always liked "The Song of Hiawatha" by Wordsworth. A link:
https://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=288 — T Clark
His trip began in 1826 and lasted three years. It was the first of a number in his lifetime that would take him throughout Europe, lead to the acquisition or mastery of seven languages, and introduce him to both classical literatures and the living authors of many countries. From this first trip also came his first youthful book and some indication of his literary temperament. It was a meditative travelogue called Outre Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea (1835)
[...]
He was, we might say, a completely literary man: imaginatively engaged with works of literary genius; generous to other writers, whom he translated and published regularly; and in love with the act of writing and the power of language. "Study of languages…" he wrote to his family on that first trip to Europe, "is like being born again." — hwlongfellow
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence. — HWL - The Theologian's Tale, Part IV
Frank [Skinner] went on holiday with Emily Dickinson and came back in love with her poetry. The poems referenced are ‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes’, ‘One need not be a Chamber — to be Haunted’ and ‘A Wind That Rose’ by Emily Dickinson. — Planet Radio
Beverley Bie Brahic is a Canadian poet and translator who lives in Paris, France and the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poetry collection, White Sheets, was a finalist for the Forward Prize and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her translations include Guillaume Apollinaire, Francis Ponge and Yves Bonnefoy. Suzannah V. Evans spoke with her at StAnza 2020, where she discussed how translating poetry inspires her own work, owning a secret shelf of erotic literature, and being a ‘selfish translator’.
While browsing for poems -- I have never before ventured down the path of The Wasteland until now. And I really did love it. I read an essay beforehand, knowing that the poem is notoriously difficult, and she suggested to sit at home with the sound of the poem rather than starting out with the analytic approach of trying to understand all the references, or even all the images! I can feel the cohesive mood in the poem, but the ending mystifies me. — Moliere
Again, do you have a source for your claim about 'modern poets' - who are they and where do they assert that 'formalities are not necessary to convey meaning?
— Amity
Mostly just using T.S. Elliot's The Wasteland as a standin for the category, since the essay I read pretty much treated it as a sort of revolutionary moment in poetry, where I thought it was clear he was inventing his own form and following it -- and certainly I felt the meaning that was there, the mood, the imagery... assertion isn't the right word, but I'm claiming that T.S. Elliot shows with this poem that we don't need the classical forms to convey meaning, (though maybe that's controversial! Others might say that it's clearly meaningless because it doesn't follow the forms....) — Moliere
“Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves… a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense… is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.
No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.”
IV. Soldati (Giuseppe Ungaretti)
The next poem on our list is by modernist Italian poet, essayist, and journalist Giuseppe Ungaretti who debuted his career in poetry while he was fighting in the trenches during World War 1. Here is his very short poem, Soldati.
— Italian Poems
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