Metal Reviews

I have plenty of poems that rhyme and flow like lyrics, but a lot of my stuff has no defined structure.

That poem is by Stephen Crane, not a lot of people realize he wrote poetry, he's known mainly for writing Red Badge of Courage. Anyway, some girl I'd met in England read my work and said I write just like him, she bought me his Complete Poems book and it's fucking weird how similar my stuff is to his. Quite a compliment, though, I think.

Well, I'm not sure about that in english, but in spanish, rhythm (ritmo) and rhyme (rima) are different. The first is essential to poetry, cause a poetry withot a internal rhythim, a cadance, doesn't flow.

The second (the rhyme) is only important in traditional occidental poetry. It's a esay way (but a forced one) to give rhythm to a poetry. But is not essential to write good poetry. Good Haikus have rhythm, flow, but doesn't rhyme.

My favourite poets, Miguel Hernández, Pablo Neruda, Salvador Espriu, just use ryhme here and there to add subtle to a concrete poetry, but not always. But all their poetrys have rhythm.
I don't post any of the poems cause, as was demostrated in my content, translation kills poetry. And the reason is that the internal rhythm, the flow, is lost (and, if there's a rhyme, it is lost too)

That's flat out incorrect. If something without rhythm or cadence couldn't flow, then there would be no such thing as a novel, a story. That's complete crap. Poetry DOES need to flow, but it does NOT need rhythm.

The poem you posted had rhythm. Everything that has a sound has rhythm- because it simply refers to the time frame occupied by any percussive sound (including speech). It doesn't have to mean it has a defined structure. ie, the rhythmn in your first line was:

I saw a man pursuing the horizon
Da Daa da Daa daDada dee daDAda

Actually, it seems you thought a lot about the length of sentences and time flow in your poem, no? I liked the decreasing duration of lines in the first segment, and I imagine it was intentional. This means that, even though there is no predetermined rhythmic structure, rhythmn was still something you considered important.

EDIT: In fact, I think a specifically organised time feel (like iambic pentameter) is described as the meter, and rhythmn is simply the way the words/notes are timed to fit over that.

That's what I tried to explain... Just that Rio explained it a lot better.

This is annoying. Unless my match brackets come up within the next hour or so, I'm going to have to PM my entry to Naffy to put up for me, going to be rather busy later...

NAFFY, WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?

The other matches were up far earlier than this...

Would it be ok if we made the thread ? The when he comes he can give instructions and let the voting begin.

Sounds good to me, I'm damn busy today. Shouldn't even be here now. I'll give him five minutes, then make the thread...

Thanks you two, for handling the fomality part.

I should have known my brother was too inconsistant to let this work... swimmingly. I'll be posting the "Next matches" hours earlier from now on. So this will never come up again.


Hopefully.

Scrapped poem

Give me my life back you son of a bitch!
You made me a grain of sand!
My life was the moral of a story for you
A fucking fraction of a book you hadn't written yet!

I've never confessed
Why I lied, to
Strive forever, lest
I died tried and true
Carrying the sword for you
So J-word, J.H.C. who can
Bear then Bury his tree
Pain Temporary, A name extraordinary
Render a guess
I cried
Striving for the best
When I died, lying, yes true
But you know I carried the blame for you
The world you gave me,
As you planned
Bore to stone, My name
Shamed eternaly alone
I blame I can't atone

"You will betray me"
That was that
Did you pull my name...
My name from a hat?!
Pity the lamb, but the scapegoat you rue
I'm the one WHO DIED FOR YOU!

Everything that has sound has rhythm, eh? So then this whole discussion is pointless?

By Slayer Of Kings saying that "rhythm and cadance are vital to a poem." is a worthless statement because you are saying that anything that has sound has rhythm? Again, rhythm is not random. Rhythm is structured, well-defined. The flow of a poem is not dictated by rhythm.

By definition all sound has rhythm, just as all sound has pitch, because the definition of rhythm is simply something like "the frame of time occupied by a sound". I'm not lying to you, man, you can look it up! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythm So if I just banged on a pan completely at random there is absolutely no structure- but the duration and temporal placement of each bang is what we describe as it's rhythm. So prose has rhythm, speech has rhythm, without any structure being required. It's really just a question of the definition. As that link says, when it's specifically structured, it becomes meter.

What's more relevant is how it applies to poetry. Given the wide definition of rhythm I have provided, I think it makes sense to assume that what SoK meant is that a good poet should put a lot of consideration into the way the words occupy time. That sounds very pretentious, but I just mean the length of sentences, length of words, which syllables should be emphasized... All this is just what constitutes rhythm. So yeah, I think the flow of a poem is dictated by rhythm to a large degree.

I think you read too much into what Slayer said. He'll likely say he meant what you just said, but in context it seemed that he was saying that poetry needed to be structured, such as a haiku, or a rhyming scheme. You've delved deep, and now we're getting into semantics and interpretations of definitions.

My point was that a poem did not have to be structure like "roses are red, violets are blue" for it to flow. The flow of a poem is not dictated by a "roses are red" rhythm, or something similar. Saying everything has rhythm has turned this into a rather pointless discussion.

Heh, agreed. Structure is certainly not essential. Good old semantics...

TTT

Updates: PG. 1

TTT-Updates

Note from me:

Guys, just to make sure no one feels iffy about my slight perdicament a few days ago, I just wanna set everyone straight, and confirm that things are settled. So, hopefully, no more hoops to leap through. Alrighty?

Sounds good, although I have no idea what you're referring to. As you were...

Exactly...

I just noticed you have my name misspelled in your signature. I'm very observant, aren't I?