View Single Post
  #8  
Unread 03-04-2002, 06:45 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: New York
Posts: 16,754
Post

Bear, I find it odd that you should say it's all in the eye for you, since I seem to recall your also saying that you have your own poetry (along with lots of poetry by others) memorized, and that you actually say poems out loud both for your own satisfaction and that of others. In fact, didn't you say that you write lots of your poems in your head and don't even write them down until you want to show them to people? Maybe I'm not remembering correctly. Forgive me if I've gotten it wrong.

A lot of metrical qualities, I'd think, don't actually require the ability to hear. I can mock drum upon the empty air and get a sense of rhythm and beat that involves no sound at all, and I know that at least some deaf people enjoy dancing.

I would also think that if it were all in the eye for you, then you wouldn't gravitate so strongly to metrical verse and that free verse (particularly the kind that sprawls across the page and makes vigorous use of odd indention and lineation) would appeal to you more. No, despite the possible irony, it seems clear to me that your "ear" is central to your sense of poetry. In fact, I'd speculate that it's poetry's ability to create an "ear" inside the head that may have a special appeal for you as the most available form of music. Certainly we've all noted that you have a very good "ear" for poetry...yet no one's ever complimented your "eye" for poetry that I can recall.