Few people seemed to understand the enjambed free verse of Williams or Creeley. I wrote my first article on this subject 40 years ago, originally a paper for Sorrentino's Williams class. I had been struggling to understand it myself already since I was about 14. People used the technique in their own poetry, but often without understanding it very well themselves.
Sort of average, bland free verse without much enjambment, that has prevalent, sounds a bit like this. It isn't really very musical sounding. It might as well be a translation from an Eastern European language. Simic uses imagery and ideas, but not much attention to logos or melos:
This strange thing must have crept
Right out of hell.
It resembles a bird’s foot
Worn around the cannibal’s neck.
As you hold it in your hand,
As you stab with it into a piece of meat,
It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird:
Its head which like your fist
Is large, bald, beakless, and blind. {Simic}
No comments:
Post a Comment