[Solan]

Curtis, you ask: "What is rhythm?"

If we generalize, as you seem to want, you could ask "What is pattern?" For rhythm is intrinsically tied to time sequences - that is, to sound.

What is ultimately at stake here, is the question of what kind of an art poetry is. If we take the art of painting, could we extend it so that the sound of the painting, however conceived, was part of what the painting was as a painting? Or are we better off saying that the sound of the thing is outside the nature of what it means to be "a painting"?

Music has been labelled the most abstract art. I think poetry deserves the rank of a good second. For like music, poetry follows time, and develops through time. It is here, then disappears as the next element takes over. The visual aspect of a piece of poetry is as relevant as the visual aspect of a piece of music. Poetry's structure, I would say, is aural and not visual.

What precisely this rhythm will consist in depends on the language. Spanish is to my knowledge mainly syllabic, and so IP would just not make any sense. In Old German and Old Norse the accentual style won through. In many modern languages, accentual-syllabic has proven its worth repeatedly. In Chinese, they supposedly measure something entirely different again.

But how do we come by those rhythms? How do we determine what's best? I propose that "verse libre" came out of a revolutionary, constructivist mind-set: What was right and what was wrong could be determined without context or reference to what has been tried. Politically, social constructivism has failed, regardless of political shade. Culturally, it has failed. Even in mathematics and philosophy, it has failed.

So as Tim Lake suggests for poetry, improving on the traditions piecemeal by trying out different techniques bit by bit is our best bet. And that is not done by declaring your verse in relation to a prior tradition as "Anything, but NOT THAT".

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Svein Olav

.. another life