Thread: Met ou non?
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Unread 06-13-2006, 01:19 AM
Michael Cantor Michael Cantor is online now
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Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Plum Island, MA; Santa Fe, NM
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Quote:
Originally posted by Clay Stockton:
Enjoy it, or not.

Unless I encounter it in a workshop. Then I verbosely over-analyze it.

Precisely.

Jason, I know that this is not exactly in line with the subject of the thread, but I would counsel you to worry more about the overall quality of your poetry - what the hell it is you're saying, and the language with which you're saying it - and less about how it should be metrically defined. The poems you have posted to date have all been metrically indistinct, yes, but they've also been vague and indistinct in many other ways, and were criticized as such. It's easy to be seduced by intellectualizing and mechanics, but first you have to confidently control the basics; and that means language, rhythm, voice, sound, and exposition as well as metrics.

In short, I don't believe that the question of how a poem should be classified is nearly as important as the question of whether it is a good poem or not. What Clay said.

Michael
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