Yeah, a number of Shakespeare's plays were written in iambic pentameter, or certainly portions of them. And yes, sometimes they really stretch things. Of course, so do I at times in my own poetry, so who am I to talk!

Oh, and speaking of Shakespeare, there was a category on Jeopardy! today called "The Hulk, Shakespeare Scholar." That is one of the best things I've ever seen...

I would make a Film Crit Hulk reference, but I've only read like, one article, so I cannot realistically do so.

I feel like just referencing FILM CRIT HULK was all the reference you needed, honestly.

...Man I should post some of HIS articles here. Particularly his article(s? I can't remember if they're separate or not) on why the 3 Act Structure and the Hero's Journey are both terrible and need to stop being slavishly adhered to.

On differentiating poetry from other forms of writing: Again, I'm offering my opinion as opposed to a scholarly one here, but the distinction to me is that the emphasis is as much on the sound and cadence of the language as it is on the content. In my mind, poetry is very much a spoken art - it's written down, but it's meant to be read aloud, because you want to hear the rhythm and cadence of the language to really appreciate the poem.

That doesn't create a bright line boundary between poetry and prose, but it's a kind of continuum with one on one end and the other on the other. You can certainly have prose which is poetic, and poetry which has prose qualities.

To cite one (possibly strange) example, someone once described The Friends of Eddie Coyle - a famous(ish) crime novel - as a "dialog poem." And, while that description was offered largely in jest, I think there's a real truth to it. The Friends of Eddie Coyle is famous for how much of the story is told in dialog (I'd guess it makes up 80 percent of the book), and for the organic, realistic construction of the dialog. The story depends on the cadence and rhythm of the speech being as genuine as it is. And, if you read it out loud, it has that kind of lyrical quality to it. So I think "dialog poem" is actually a pretty good description, and it kind of hints at the continuum between poetry and prose.

I would find it absolutely hilarious if he tackled the issue over three articles.

I should really figure out the best way to post the recordings of my poems. I have most of them recorded in .mp3 format. I could make simple videos like I did with "Down to the Valley," but I feel like I should put some sort of art with them. I'm always tempted to use the cards the poems depict, but I'm not sure if it's right (or legal) to do that...

@OL:

Lolita is another book that starts to drift into the realms of poetry. That's an amazing book to read aloud.

@Raven:

I mean, it's certainly a transformative use of the cards so it certainly sounds like protected use to me.

@Luna:

Aaaaaaah if only.

Tragically it's just two articles:

http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/2011/ ... ****/
http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/2011/ ... structure/

One-hundred-percent agreed.

Although, every time I remember that Nabokov wrote like that in what wasn't even his first language, it gives me a moment of despair for the rest of us.

Ugh, I know. It's just debilitating to think about.

For the record, if anyone out there is now going to choose between reading Lolita and The Friends of Eddie Coyle, go with Lolita first.

Then, if you have an extra four hours to kill, read The Friends of Eddie Coyle. It's a short book, and it goes fast.

Here's the first paragraph, which I think is a good example of what I'm talking about. On the page, the words look almost messy. But, reading them aloud and making allowances for the cadence of speech, they have a gritty kind of lyricism to them:

It's worth noting, OL, that the first portion of that excerpt is in an almost perfect iambic tetrameter (something I write in frequently). If I write it out like the first three lines of a poem, you'll see that all it's missing to be perfect iambic tetrameter is an initial unstressed syllable in the first and third lines, something not at all uncommon in poetry:

JACKie BROWN at TWENty-SIX,
With NO exPRESsion ON his FACE,
SAID that HE could GET some GUNS.

That's pretty interesting.

Just a head's up: I've decided to pull the proverbial trigger and broach the subject of including Starstill in the M:EM: viewtopic.php?f=47&t=3905

I think it's a great idea.


That is fascinating. I'm really glad you noticed that.

And I doubt that George Higgins was sitting at his desk and counting syllables on his fingers when he was writing, so I think it kind of reinforces the point from earlier that you don't need a very technical knowledge of poetry in order to write something which is a poem or has the qualities of a poem.

Just out of curiosity, speaking of poetry... did anyone get a chance to look at my weird Milton fanfic? >_>

As one who has never read a word of Milton, I have to ask: How much do you build on his work(s) that it would be required to know in advance?

Not more than you can glean from the Argument sections at the beginning of each passage. Archaic story conventions are rather useful sometimes.

I'll look at it sometime, then. Remind me again after a while; I'm likely to forget with all the M:EM stuff I'm still reading thru.

It's on my to-do list, hopefully for tomorrow. The link is in this thread, right?

I was never asked to read Milton in high school or college, so this will be interesting.

Possibly an admission against interests, but, whenever I think of Milton, I immediately think of Donald Sutherland in Animal House:

I relate to that man on a deep spiritual level after last semester =_=