Reading the Rhythm

ISBN-13: 9780198158820 / Angielski / Twarda / 1993 / 304 str.

Clive Scott

Opis

We are still a long way from knowing how to read the rhythms of free verse, a poetry which has been largely neglected by metrical theory. Clive Scott's readable and scholarly study indicates the strategies of reading needed if justice is to be done to free verse's rhythmic versatility.The core of Reading the Rhythm is an analysis of key French twentieth-century poets and poems, including Perse's Éloges, Cendrars's Prose du Transsibérien, Dix-neuf poèmes élastiques, and Documentaires; Apollinaire's Calligrammes; Supervielle's Gravitations; and Reverdy's Sources de vent. Contemporary trends in the visual arts - Cubism, Futurism, Orphism, photography - are called upon as perceptual models to illuminate free verse and a further perspective is added by the theme of travel and movement.This is an accomplished examination of the rhythms of free verse, and of its implications for our reading of regular verse. It is also a significant study of modernist poetics.

We are still a long way from knowing how to read the rhythms of free verse. Clive Scott examines the work of a range of early twentieth-century poets, including Cendrars, Apollinaire, Perse, and Supervielle in order to indicate the reading strategies needed to do justice to free verse's rhythmic versatility. This is a readable and accomplished discussion of poetry that continues to raise important questions about the ways in which we read.

Recenzje

the poetry specialist interested in free verse or in any of the poets studied will likely to find it to be thought-provoking and rewarding