Both Jordan Davis and Jonathan Mayhew praise Clark Coolidge (here and here). I don't find Coolidge at all interesting, and though that may be a personal problem, Jonathan partially explains Coolidge's rhythmic practice this way:
It's about the rhythmic phrasing in relation to the phonological structure of the language. A word used as another part of speech, noun as adjective, verb as noun, creates a sort of syntactic "hiccup" which is felt rhythmically.
Isn't that just the kind of sacrifice of ordinary language to prosody which anti-metrists condemn in poorly handled meter?
Henry says "every era in language & poetry develops its own approaches to rhythm." But in only one era in the history of Western poetry did any significant number of poets think it necessary or desirable to abandon meter. Could human character have actually changed in or about December of 1910?
12:32:36 PM
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