Re: Hebrew poetry was Re: Insane Question

Peter Clark wrote:
>         The basic unit of the (Biblical) Hebrew poem is the colon (plural
cola).
> There is usually a balancing between combinations of cola, which is
refered
> to as parallelism.
(snip interesting listing)
There are some very fine (almost too fine) translations of Sa'dan Toraja
(Celebes, Indonesia) funeral chants, published in the 50/60s by the KITLV
(for those interested), consisting almost entirely parallelisms; I'll see if
I have any examples....Their poetry provided a ready-made pattern for
translation of the Psalms; if I can find my copy of their Bible will send a
few.

> Robert Frost said something to the effect that "writing free verse is like
playing tennis without the net." (snip)... if the poet doesn't sweat and
struggle at least a little bit with the craft, then it really isn't poetry,
but prose with weird linebreaks.

Yes, but... (guilty with extenuating circumstances)

>ObConlang: Conlang poems that invent words specifically to rhyme or fit
with
> the meter or whatever is cheating in my opinion. :)
Guilty again, but....less of a crime. If you need a _new_ word X to rhyme
with Y, why not? Or if X already exists and doesn't rhyme, devise/use a
synomym that does.  It works in English.

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