A Prosody Of Free Verse

To make sense of free verse" in theory or in practice, the whole study of prosody--the function of rhythm in poetry--must be revised and rethought. Stating this as the issue that poets and critics have faced in the past century, Charles Hartman takes up the challenge and develops a theory of prosody that includes the most characteristic forms of twentieth-century poetry. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

There is to date no comprehensive account of the rhythms of free verse. The main purpose of A Prosody of Free Verse: explorations in rhythm is to fill that gap and begin to provide a systematic approach to describing and analyzing free verse rhythms. Most studies have declared the attempt to write such a prosody as impossible: they prefer to see free verse as an aberrant version of regular metrical verse. They also believe that behind free verse is the ‘ghost of metre’. Running against that current, A Prosody of Free Verse bases its new system on additive rhythms that do not fit conventional time signatures. Inspiration is taken from jazz, contemporary music and dance, not only in their systems of notation but in performance. The book argues that twentieth and twenty-first century rhythms in poetry as based on the line rather than the metrical foot as the unit of rhythm , and that larger rhythmic structures fall into verse paragraphs rather than stanzas.

A groundbreaking study of the connections among meter, the poetic unconscious, and wider literary and cultural forces

This guide to versification is immensely useful for anyone interested in poetry or in general poetic structure. Concise and informal, it offers a systematic study of meter, tempo, rhyme, and other components of verse.

Verse is a seminal introduction to prosody for any student learning to read or write poetry, from secondary to graduate school. Discusses iambic pentameter and other kinds of metrical verse, scansion, rhythm and rhyme, free verse, song, and advanced topics such as poetic meter, linguistic approaches to verse, and the computer scansion of metrical poetry Written in a clear, engaging style by a poet and teacher with more than 30 years of experience teaching the subject Supplemented by a user-friendly website with student exercises and additional resources

Argues that free verse has deep historical roots, and traces them, from Milton to contemporary poetry

Verse is a seminal introduction to prosody for any student learning to read or write poetry, from secondary to graduate school. Discusses iambic pentameter and other kinds of metrical verse, scansion, rhythm and rhyme, free verse, song, and advanced topics such as poetic meter, linguistic approaches to verse, and the computer scansion of metrical poetry Written in a clear, engaging style by a poet and teacher with more than 30 years of experience teaching the subject Supplemented by a user-friendly website with student exercises and additional resources

This book examines the most salient and misunderstood aspect of twentieth-century poetry, free verse. Although the form is generally approached as if it were one indissoluble lump, it is actually a group of differing poetic genres proceeding from much different assumptions. Separate chapters on T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, H.D., and William Carlos Williams elucidate many of these assumptions and procedures, while other chapters address more general theoretical questions and trace the continuity of Modern poetics in contemporary poetry. Taking a historical and aesthetic approach, this study demonstrates that many of the forms considered to have been invented in the Modern period actually extend underappreciated traditions. Not only does this book examine the classical influence on Modern poetry, it also features discussions of the poetics of John Milton, Abraham Cowley, Matthew Arnold, and a host of lesser-known poets. Throughout it is an investigation of the prosodic issues that free verse foregrounds, particularly those focusing on the reader's part in interpreting poetic rhythm.