You have proved my point, Mark. I don't believe I ever said that "all of Joyce" was "poetic." but I did say of the sort of language you quote "except in the form of mockery or satire it is hardly effective, much less attractive, prose.” Joyce could write in any style under the sun and the part you quote obviously mocks formal, circumlocutory and utterly boring language, which is made particularly obvious coming immediately, as it does, after a pasage like this:
“Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa!
Tim. In my opinion, the term “verse” , though often misused, still strongly suggests lineation and control over the line endings, the only thing that clearly distinguishes it from prose, so I don’t agree with the term “unlineated verse” to describe the Joyce piece. You can have unlineated poetry all right, usually known as “prose” but sometimes as “prose poetry” but that is quite a different matter. I am sure all this has been discussed ad nauseam before on these boards, but I think we can agree, if it was ever in doubt, that prose can be as noble, musical, rhythmic and moving as verse, with verse, perhaps, having the edge because of the writer’s ability to control the line length or endings. It might be argued, by the way, that this control is actually increased in the case of good free verse.
I have to say, though Hardy is one of my favourite writers, I find his prose pretty old-fashioned for its period, and to be avoided as a model at all costs, compared to, say, Joseph Conrad, though, to be fair, Conrad’s first novel was published around the same time as Hardy’s last.
“In the days of high-waisted and muslin-gowned women, when the vast amount of soldiering going on in the county was a cause of much trembling to the sex, there lived in a village near the Wessex coast two ladies of good report, though unfortunately of limited means.” “The Trumpet Major 1880- opening lines”
One would take this, at first sight, to be a parody of Jane Austen (b.1775) But Hardy is apparently being serious!
I thought the extremely talented Cormac MacCarthy became over-poetic and unbearably long-winded in his “Horses” trilogy which I gave up on about half way through. I’ll stick with Richard Ford, John Updike and, yes, Raymond Carver, thank you very much.
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