Words that are poems, #1

Fri, 08 May 2009 23:06:06 GMT

While reading Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt Against Meter, I just ran across this:

For example, Euripides claims that Aeschylus is bombastic (kompophakelorrēmona, “boast-bundle-phrased”)

which sounds remarkably Entish, doesn’t it? Here’s Treebeard:

‘Hoom, well, that is fair enough,’ said Treebeard; ‘for to be sure Ents have played their part. And not only in dealing with that, hoom, that accursed tree-slayer that dwelt here. For there was a great inrush of those, burárum, those evileyed-blackhanded-bowlegged-flinthearted-clawfingered-foulbellied-bloodthirsty, morimaite-sincahonda, hoom, well, since you are hasty folk and their full name is as long as years of torment, those vermin of orcs; and they came over the River and down from the North and all round the wood of Laurelindórenan, which they could not get into, thanks to the Great ones who are here.’ He bowed to the Lord and Lady of Lórien.

(The book is interesting so far: it tells how free verse got privileged over metrical verse starting around a century ago. I wonder, though, how much point there can be to explaining this in terms of what was going on in poetry then, given modernism breaking out in other arts at the same time.)

Poetry Friday

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:30:03 GMT

From a private discussion trying to make sense of a line about ‘dust smotes’, my contribution:

Electrostatic lust
Doth charge the smitten dust
To leap unto the duster.
Alighting, all afluster,
On feathery waves afloat,
It’s trapped! O poor dust smote.

Colophon

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:51:53 GMT

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Words that are poems, #1

Poetry Friday

Colophon