I don't see that anyone is using rhythm at all today - rather, it appears that they don't have the faintest idea what it is. They speak of rhythm, and do not know it. The boundary lies with something like Coventry Patmore's "The Toys", where rhythm exists for a couple of lines or so in strict terms and more widely in general terms, but despite not having one pervasive rhythm, it is clear that rhythm is at the core. In modern poetry I don't find it anywhere at all.
Words do not become meaningful by being put in a grid; in rhythmical poems, the grid exists to define the rhythm, and all the skill is in making the words meaningful whilst still retaining the advantages of the grid. Not to maintain meaning and rhythm at the same time is, in that form of poetry, to fail. If the grid were arbitrary, and conveyed no particular benefits, then I would agree, but in my view that's exactly what modern poetry is - all grid, and neither rhythm nor meaning.
I remain convinced that modern poetry is a cult of self and mutual hypnosis, in which enough people gathering together to praise the Emperor's clothes can see them even when they are not there, but in this answer you have at least given me a better idea of how that arises ;)
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Date: 2009-05-26 10:38 am (UTC)Words do not become meaningful by being put in a grid; in rhythmical poems, the grid exists to define the rhythm, and all the skill is in making the words meaningful whilst still retaining the advantages of the grid. Not to maintain meaning and rhythm at the same time is, in that form of poetry, to fail. If the grid were arbitrary, and conveyed no particular benefits, then I would agree, but in my view that's exactly what modern poetry is - all grid, and neither rhythm nor meaning.
I remain convinced that modern poetry is a cult of self and mutual hypnosis, in which enough people gathering together to praise the Emperor's clothes can see them even when they are not there, but in this answer you have at least given me a better idea of how that arises ;)