Re: Metrical Stress, Feet, etc.

En réponse à Ray Brown :


>Right, so what distinguishes it from prose?
Mainly rhyme. Philippe has talked long over rhythm. It is true that rhythm 
is important, but there are no rules as to how to achieve it, and what some 
people will like others won't. So finding the right rhythm is like finding 
the right words: it defines whether the poem is a success or not, but it 
doesn't define poetry as such. It's completely personal and ruleless.

>  I think that's what I've never
>really figured out. And I seem to recall reading many years ago something
>about a caesura in the middle of the Alexandrin. (Caesurae occur in
>classical hexamter & other meters - but I've avoided mentioning them so
>far  :)
Indeed. Normal alexandrins have a caesura in the middle, i.e. a small pause.


>Right - that's another things that's obviously misled me. I've used both
>from stress-based and quantitative verse to feet being composed of two or
>more syllables.
When I first learned Latin verse, it was difficult to get used to have feet 
of more than one syllable :)) .


>Yes - is rhyme really the only thing that distinguishes verse from prose?
>Was my old headmaster right, then, when he dismissed 'vers libre' as just
>"chopped up prose"?
Right or not, it's mostly a matter of opinion (many will say there's 
nothing more poetic than vers libre :)) ), but indeed rhyming is about the 
most important thing in classical French poetry, that and the correct 
amount of feet in the verse.

Christophe Grandsire.
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.