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 Eloges, Cendrars's Prose du Transsiberien, Dix-neuf poemes elastiques, 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.
- ISBN10 0198158823
- ISBN13 9780198158820
- Publish Date 5 August 1993
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Oxford University Press
- Imprint Clarendon Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 304
- Language English