[Janice D. Soderling]

Since my election day verse at NewVerseNews, I have received three acceptances. The editors at Lucid Rhythms and Centrifugal Eye kindly said yes to a counted verse and a prose poem respectively. And the editor at Prick of the Spindle where I have not previously had work, accepted a flash.

Needless to say, I am pleased as punch, and thank goodness we have these dedicated people who provide us with forums to present our blood, sweat and tears.

Thanks James, David, Eve and Cynthia.

[Mary Meriam]

Way to go, Janice! Give us links when you get them. I always enjoy reading your poems.

[Quincy Lehr]

Not to turn this into a GT thread or nothin', but nor would the magazines be worth much without good submissions. Way to go, Janice.

[Catherine Chandler]

Kudos, Janice!

[Janice D. Soderling]

Thank you friends. I hope to employ you all as commenters when I knuckle down to serious writing in 2009. Hooray for Eratosphere.

[Jennifer Reeser]

I'm looking forward to the Lucid Rhythms piece in particular, Ms. Garbo.

[Roger Slater]

Congrats!

What's "counted verse"?

[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited December 08, 2008).]

[Janice D. Soderling]

Bob, if you happen to have a copy of An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art (ed. Annie Finch & Kathrine Varnes) you will find a wonderful essay by Paul Hoover on counted verse.

Mr. Turco does not take it up in "The Book of Forms".

So now you are saying, "cut the the chase, Janice, I asked what is it?[/i]."

Well,

Paul Hoover starts his essay with this description:

Counted verse operates by the number of words, rather than the number of syllables and stresses to the line. It is not primarily syllabic and accentual, though it obviously has those features. As Dana Gioia suggested in conversation, it reminds us that there are two kinds of lines, the visual and the aural.

He goes on to talk about the drama of the relationship and (speaking of the very best counted verse I know, May Svenson's "Four-Word Lines", see below) he says;

"(...) generally two of the four words in eah line have relational weight. In the line "I wish we were," alliteration and mirroring the "we" in "were") are barely enough to sustain the line, and it feels thin. But the sentence "When your / lashes ride down and / rise like brown bees' / legs, your pronged gaze / makes my eyes gauze" is weighty and resonant line-by-line. The parallelism of "pronged gaze" and "eyes gauze" is reminiscent of Gwendolyn Brooks's "We Real Cool".

(...)

William Carlos Williams's "The Red Wheelbarrow" is written in counted verse; it is also formally replete despite being only eight lines long.

The whole essay is worth reading and re-reading and the book is a treasure. I have plugged this book so many times, even before I discovered the Eratosphere connections (other essays by John Frederick Nims, R.S. Gwynn, Jan D. Hodge, Gail White, and other often name-dropped names, here and elsewhere, as well as poetry examples by many other familiar names. The counted verse essay ends with examples, including "Paradise" by George Herbert which, though perhaps best known as a diminishing verse ia also a counted verse. Here is M. Svenson's:


Four-Word Lines

your eyes are just
like bees, and I
feel like a flower.
Their brown power makes
a breeze go over
my skin. when your
lashes ride down and
rise like brown bees'
legs, your pronged gaze
makes my eyes gauze.
I wish we were
in some shade and
no swarm of other
eyes to know that
I'm a flower breathing
bare, laid open to
your bees' warm stare.
I'd let you wade
in me and seize
with your eager brown
bees' power a sweet
glistening at my core.

May Swenson (from "The Complete Love Poems of May Swenson".

**********

Thanks Jennifer. Garbo? I wish! Ha, ha.

[Aaron Poochigian]

Congratulations, Janice. I, too, am grateful for the editors of the world. So far, for me, they have always been pleasant to work with and reasonable (more so than me, I fear).