[New-Poetry] Re: a dead ear for scansion

[David Bircumshaw]

> I wouldn't want to say to much on this except that: anyone who learns 
> to sing the traditional inheritance of hymns and liturgy will realise 
> that scansion certainly does exist, at the same time, Robert Frost's 
> criticism of free verse: that it is like playing tennis without a net, 
> can be rejoindered with 'yes, that's the attraction'. As Auden 
> observed, you have to have a perfect ear to write free verse. It's a 
> Faustian turn-on. Trouble is, those who have no ear who write it, bah!
PS

the thing about iambic pentameter: it's a matter of swagger. Rap doesn't 
do it, although it's as public as the Elizabethan-Jacobean stage, it's 
too pre-occupied with being ego,  the Players started off from that 
point and rapidly went beyond it, they had to do dialogue, along with 
the afflatus, and the swagger went cosmic.

The studious stuff that comes later diminishes with each generation.

-- 

David Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk