Article on syntax at Magma Poetry
 

Enjoy the joy, hoy.

http://magmapoetry.com/poetry-and-th...agma+Poetry%29

So much for banning inversions! Let's keep this article in mind as a reference when we need to demonstrate occasions when inverted syntax works very well indeed.

I agree. An elegant inversion is, well, elegant, classy, high diction.

But inversion for the sake of nabbing a rhyme or smoothing metrics, isn't.

One has to love this line:

"The absence of punctuation and the consequent syntactical ambiguities are simultaneously disruptive and energising – the way collision and confusion often are."

"consequent syntactical ambiguities"... what a nice idea! Do we do enough of them? And, in practice, do readers always love them?

Thanks,

Bill

Bill, check out the Gunnar Björling threads on the Translation forums. I am obsessed with that question at present.

I listened to WS Graham's "Night Fishing" on BBC. It's basically a playlet with three voices, all representing the author. Not my forte.

You should try Graham's earlier stuff, Lance, in pariculr a couple of middle-sized poems about living in Edinburgh. One of them has the chorus:

Lie over to me from the wall, or else
Get up and clean the grate.

I tried to write like that once.