-
サマリー
あらすじ・解説
We need to say a bit more about the role of meter and line and how they contribute to making verse an art form. Meter and line provide the skeleton and sinews of a poem. They give shape and rhythm to the words that hang on them stanza after stanza. The more regular they are, the more the poem “feels” like a poem. Much of contemporary poetry has thrown off all requirements of regular structure and demonstrates very little regard for meter and line as these have been practiced over the centuries in traditional English verse. I find such poems more difficult to read and appreciate, and to recall or commend. Many very fine examples of what is referred to as “free verse” exist, but I regard them as the exception. For our purposes I want to consider as an art in the long-standing tradition of the arts, those poems that honor the value of regular meter and line length.