Allomorphs
Axis poetry
Centred rhyme
Consonants and vowels
Directionality
Fictional poetry
Fragmentation of the poem
Inter-line poetry
'Linguistically innovative poetry'
Linkage by meaning
Modulation
Poem-fields
Poem-archetypes
Pulse poetry
Rearrangement and restoration
Second meanings
Semantic force or semantic impact
Tensile art
Timing
Transept poetry
Unit poetry
Zoning
Variant, linked forms of a poem or other work of art in which the shape is modified. For example, a poem may be in matrix form - almost all poems have been printed in matrix form, the standard way of printing a poem in consecutive lines. Alternatively, the lines may be fractured, opening the texture to some extent, or the poem may undergo fragmentation, opening the texture still further and giving a new linkage with the page or other surface. Allomorphism is a consequence of diversification.
Axis poetry (for the time being, this entry is simply taken from the page on concrete poetry.)
There's a linkage with graphic design, since the technique affects the appearance of the poem on the page. As in the case of other formal innovations, form should not be considered in isolation from content. Powerful emotion, the overwhelming force of the content, can almost compel the adoption of a form, such as the sonnet. Later, I use poetry by Shakespeare to illustrate the argument.
The layout of things far removed from poetry underlies the axis form. Consider a simple set of mathematical equations and the way in which the equations are laid out on the page, or a set of linkage statements in the notation I've devised and the way in which these linkage statements are laid out on the page, the linkage brackets <> in a vertical line. The contents brackets [] and linkage brackets are left blank in this illustrative example.
a = c - b
b = 2
c = 4
a = - 2
[ ] <> [ ]
[ ] <> [ ]
[ ] <> [ ]
Lines of poetry can be laid out on the page in a similar way. Each line has a linkage of some sort in the centre, a left side of the line and a right side of the line. The linkages in the centre, laid out in an imaginary vertical line, are the axis of the poem. The poem is divided into approximately two halves, left and right. ('Centred rhyme' - for this, please see the page concerned with 'linkage by sound - can also be considered as a form of axis poetry, although in this case there is a horizontal axis and the two halves of the poem are 'upper' and 'lower.') Although the meaning of axis here is completely clear and straightforward, it's worth including here a dictionary definition of axis: 'a real or imaginary line ... about which an object, form, composition, or geometrical construction is symmetrical.' Since axis poetry gives shape to the poem on the page, it's most conveniently classified as a form of concrete poetry.
What linkages may there be along the vertical axis? There are various possibilities. These are only a few:
A space generally shows the position of the vertical axis. The organizing principle which links the left side of the line and the right side of the line and which is, as it were, placed in the space, may be no more than a pause, the space being the visual counterpart of the pause. This is a diversification of the caesura. The caesura is generally applied in a non-systematic way, the space in centred poetry is applied in a systematic way, and is presented in a systematic way on the page. The result is a series of split lines. James Dickey employed split lines in his poetry, sometimes with one space in the line, sometimes with more than one, presenting the spaces unsystematically, without a vertical axis. An excerpt from James Dickey's 'The Firebombing:'
Slants is woven with wire thread
Levels out holds together like a quilt Off the starboard wing cloud flickers
Another organizing principle is faulting. The linkage is with the geological process called faulting in which layers of rock, subjected to pressure, fracture and move along a fault plane. In faulted poetry, the vertical axis is the fault plane, the lines of poetry are the strata- and the emotional force of the poet is the physical pressure applied to the material.
Another is equality, the linkage being with the equals sign in equations like the ones above. There can't, of course, be strict equality. Mathematically, equality may indicate that the expressions on either side of the sign have the same reference. This can be implemented in lines of poetry, the left side of the line having the same reference as the right side of the line.
The space may simply indicate a boundary, as in the example of an axis poem reachable by a text link from the page on Composite poetry. This poem, 'Derwentwater: Summer and Winter,' is for two voices and the space shows the boundary between the two voices, voice 1 on the left and voice 2 on the right.
Other organizing principles are conjunction and disjunction. Disjunction - disconnection or separation - is suited to many different contents: opposing views, sharply contrasted views, but also a dialogue between different minds, of the kind found in Yeats' 'A Dialogue of Self and Soul,' or Yeats' 'Ego Dominus Tuus,' although the form generally demands more succinct statements than in either of these. Like the other organizing principles, disjunction can lead to poetry which transcends the organizing principle, to a poetry which is not at all abstract. If there should be any doubt about this, consider this very clear and, in fact, systematic example of disjunction, even if the disjunction isn't shown along a vertical axis, from Shakespeare:
CRABBED Age and Youth
Cannot live together:
Youth is full of pleasance,
Age is full of care;
Youth like summer morn,
Age like winter weather,
Youth like summer brave,
Age like winter bare;
Youth is full of sport,
Age's breath is short,
Youth is nimble, Age is lame;
Youth is hot and bold,
Age is weak and cold,
Youth is wild, and Age is tame:—
Age, I do abhor thee;
Youth, I do adore thee:
O! my Love, my Love is young!
Age, I do defy thee—
O sweet shepherd, hie thee,
For methinks thou stay'st too long.
Setting out a few lines as centred poetry, along an axis:
Youth is full of pleasance Age is full of care Youth like summer morn Age like winter weather Youth like summer brave Age like winter bare
Established 'rhyming' techniques include the couplet, which links by sound pairs of lines, to give the sound scheme aa, bb...or the linkage which can be described by the scheme abab cdcd...However, in this field as in others, diversification is possible. (See General Glossary.) The list of techniques is not closed (again, see General Glossary) and there are new possibilities. In centred sound linkage, the first line of the poem is linked with the last, the second line is linked with the penultimate line, and so on, leaving two lines in the centre of the poem which are linked by sound, or, alternatively, a single line not linked with any other. The lines which are linked at the centre of the poem, being very near to each other, have a marked sound effect. The lines towards the top and bottom of the poem (in the border region) are linked by sound but the rhymes are distant. There is a sound gradient, then, from pronounced to faint.
The contrast I would make is not between consonants and vowels but between consonants and short vowels on the one hand and long vowels on the other. Consonants and short vowels are like the notes produced by a percussive instrument such as the piano. Long vowels can be sustained, like the long, sustained notes which can be produced by the string, woodwind and brass instruments in the orchestra. In the opening lines of my poem
Blinding snow,
settling and unsettling snow,
snow resting like mortar on the stone
of the cold, unroofed, unfinished home
we call the world,
snow drifting far, and wide...
the long vowels in the words 'far' (in particular) and 'wide' should be lengthened very much when the poem is spoken.
Poetry in English is accentual not quantitative, of course, but I attach great importance to the difference between short and long value. The 'length value' of a line as a whole can be increased appreciably not only by long vowels but also by caesuras and by a rallentando, a slowing down.
There are horizontal, vertical and diagonal components of directionality in a poem.
Horizontal direction (or the x-direction): the obvious fact that reading is from left to right, and, also the fact that the line ending may act as a kind of force, increasing directionality.
Vertical direction (or the y-direction): the progress from line to line. Directionality does not, of course, require that the transition from line to line should be uneventful. The movement of the verse from the end of one line to the beginning of the next offers opportunities for surprise, shock, playfulness. Klee wrote of taking a line for walk. His reference was to painting, but poets can put his words into practice. See also the essay by Christopher Ricks, 'Wordsworth: "A Pure Organic Pleasure from the Lines."' (originally published in 'Essays in Criticism,' volume 21, 1971. Reprinted in 'William Wordsworth: a Critical Anthology,' edited by Graham McMaster.) However, the eventfulness in moving from one line to the next may be less important in a poem than the linking of lines by cumulative power and passion, or interest of other kinds, into a seamless whole.
Diagonal direction: the progress from top left to bottom right of the poem. The complete span in reading the poem.
Modification of directionality, counter-directional techniques, may lead to artistically significant results.The use of centred rhyme modifies vertical direction. The placing of the most dramatic material in the first few lines of a poem acts as a backwards pull, reducing the movement to the end of the poem to an extent.
Techniques which increase directionality give rise to intensification. Techniques which decrease directionality give rise to tension. Tensile art makes use of intensification and tension.
Languages too may modify directionality. In a poem in German, the placing of a verb at the end of a clause will act as a pull, increasing directionality, but when the verb arrives, the reader is directed to the subject of the verb, decreasing directionality.
There is a linkage here between poetry and fiction, which is usually regarded as a prose form. In prose writing, it's recognized that the 'I' of the narrator can have a fictional as well as a non-fictional reference. In fictional poetry, the assumption that the 'I' of a poem refers to particular experiences of the poet is invalid, as in this poem of mine:
I loved, or tried to, two
because there was no third.
I read into,
far into the night
I read into, alone,
because I was not right.
The time for settling
unsettling old scores,
the time for timetabled. parting.
Leaves were downed,
I walked, winded,
the cold and copper ground.
Leaves! Leaves! Leavings!
Picture poetry is one kind of design poetry. The lines are freed from their position in the matrix, referring to the environment in which the picture poem has its origin and are arranged in the picture space. (Almost all poetry so far has been in what I refer to as matrix form - the usual way in which a poem is printed, as a continuous block of lines.) In picture poetry, there is fragmentation of the matrix. If, for example, a representational picture poem describes events in the sky, where there is a plane, events near a wood on the left and events near a river on the right, then the line or lines which are about these events are not placed in sequence, in the matrix of a traditional poem, but are placed where these events take place in the representation, high up in the picture space and lower down, to the left and right. Click here for a dynamic page which shows fragmentation of the poem.
In placing the words in the picture space, the designer may take account of considerations which are familiar to artists, such as balance, proportion, deliberate use of imbalance and disproportion, arrangement of masses along horizontals, verticals and diagonals. This is the practice of text design, which offers exhilarating opportunities.
This has important implications for the directionality of a poem and the reading of a poem. The reading of a traditional poem in matrix form is obviously simple: from the left hand side of the first line to the right hand side of the last line. When a picture poem is read, directionality is more complex, as shown by the eye movements of the reader when looking at the picture space. For example, the first lines of the poem may be placed in the lower right hand corner of the picture space. The next lines may direct the viewer to the lower left hand side, to be followed by a shift to top right. There may be frequent pauses, allowing time for concentrated attention on a single part of the picture space and the words in that part of the picture space. Poetry becomes in this way less subject to time. (The non-temporal aspects of poetry and the temporal aspects of visual art interest me very much.)
Inter-line poetry (a form of composite poetry)
Composite poetry is poetry in which contrasting elements are combined. A composite poem can be created by inserting the contrasting material into the main text in the form of a block, a technique which has been used quite often. In inter-line poetry, which so far as I am aware is completely new, the lines of the main text are double spaced and the contrasting material is inserted into the spaces between these lines. Many different contrasts are possible between main text and insert. They may differ in tone, in organization (free or formal). The insert may comment on the main text or may even be critical of it.
'Linguistically innovative poetry'
I dislike the name, used in this country by, amongst others, the poet Robert Shepherd. Using the technical language of Linkage Theory, it treats as 'free' what is 'bound.' It states, as if stating could bring into being, or make of something a reality. Some 'linguistically innovative poets' are linguistically innovative, others are not.
The 'innovations' of 'Linguistically Innovative Poetry' are often, more accurately, 'unusual uses' or 'non-standard uses' of syntax, or are instances of fragmentation, but not the kind of fragmentation I deal with in a separate entry in this glossary. Instead, the fragmentation found in James Joyce's 'Finnegans Wake,' which was surely, overall, an artistic failure, even if an interesting failure.
Even poetry which is Genuinely Linguistically Innovative may be at the same time 'Emotionally Inert Poetry,' 'Conventional Sentiment Poetry,' 'Linguistically Innovative Poetry with Nothing to Say,' 'Linguistically Innovative (but ask for your money back) Poetry.' There are variants such as 'Routinely Linguistically Innovative Poetry,' otherwise known as 'Linguistically Innovative Poetry (Standard Stuff),' since it's far easier to attach a label than to create real innovations and to convey emotion.
Despite all this, I've written poems myself in the style, although I would never describe them as 'linguistically innovative.' Below is one example. It reflects my continuing preoccupation with the allied bombing campaign during the Second World War. A survey which is as complete as possible should have the fullest possible range. It should do justice to the extremes and to the regions within the extremes. There should be the fewest possible limits to poetry. Poetry should be concerned with almost imperceptible processes, slight miscalculations, hesitations, misgivings - and, also, with apocalyptic events, massive destruction, dangers, loss of life, crushing blows, devastating misjudgments, heroism - old-fashioned heroism - of the most admirable kind (but inextricably linked with ethical problems of the most severe kind.)
Here, the order of reading, the {ordering}is mainly horizontal, in a subsidiary fashion vertical. There are fragments of sentences and fragments of words: 'dure-' 'ess,' 'de-'
'Night' and 'alight' are linked-antitheses. The splitting of the word 'unendurable' emphasizes the act of going on and on: 'unend' and 'durable.' There was a punishment in this country in past centuries called 'peine forte et dure,' which involved 'pressing' the victim with weights, to make the victim confess.'Dure,' formed by fragmenting the word 'duress' refers to this punishment, as does 'pressed,' lower in the poem, formed by fragmentation from 'depressed.' Familiar, almost cliched phrases are used to refer to refer to the mutilated victims of the bombing offensive: 'gone...to pieces,' and the more common 'blown up out of all proportion,' here given a literal and concrete meaning.
I regard 'leaves' as more 'free' than 'fixed.' Although it's fixed to the extent that it's clearly a verb rather than a noun in the poem, its associations are in tension. This is a private association, but 'leaves' reminds me of the strips of aluminium, called 'Window,' which were released by the bombers to confuse the German defences. And, 'leaves' suggests human mortality. Homer has 'Men are like leaves,' although it's difficult to translate the original. If these two associations seem very remote from your experience, bear in mind that as a result of fragmentation, 'leaves' is left isolated in the right hand column of the poem, with separation from the grammar of the sentence. The isolated word invites associations, no longer as fully embedded. A further association, not at all obvious, but not arbitrary - the use of leaves in another description of bombing, but here, the bombing of London, in T S Eliot's 'Little Gidding,' a significant and successful sub-region within the Parnassian (artistically unsuccessful) region of 'Four Quartets:'
In the uncertain hour before the morning
Near the ending of interminable night
At the recurrent end of the unending
After the dark dove with the flickering tongue
Had passed below the horizon of his homing
While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin
Over the asphalt where no other sound was
Between three districts whence the smoke arose
I met one walking, loitering and hurried
As if blown towards me like the metal leaves
Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.
Rhyme is an instance of linkage by sound, as is alliteration. Linkage of lines in a poem by rhyme, shown by rhyme schemes such as aa bb cc...is obviously a very well-established technique. In 'linkage by meaning' (or 'semantic linkage') lines are generally linked according to the meaning of the last word or phrase in each line. (The technique can also be used in a less formal and systematic way.) There are many distinct possibilities. Words, or phrases, may be synonyms, antonyms, near-synonyms or near-antonyms - the equivalent of pararhyme. Alternatively, they may be linked by a significant context, or illustrate progression, development or modulation, as in the example to the right. The words on the left hand side of the poem indicate progression in the seasons and the words on the right indicate progression in times of day.
Meaning schemes can be constructed which have a linkage with rhyme schemes. For example, AA BB CC is the semantic equivalent of rhymed couplets. (I use lower-case letters for rhyme schemes and upper-case letters for meaning schemes.)
(Click here to see the page on Modulation and the poetry of Jared Carter.)
Meter in poetry has a linkage with the pulse of the human body. Both are instances of a periodic alteration. In 'pulse poetry,' the linkage is with a pulse produced by electronic means. If the pulse is displayed on a screen, there may be regular intervals between the pulses, or irregular intervals. The pulses may be fixed in width, or variable in width. There are the same possibilities if the pulses are displayed in audible form.
In pulse poetry, instead of the alternation of accented syllables and unaccented syllables, there is the alternation of the pulses (the accented component) and the spaces between the pulses (the unaccented component). If the pulses are displayed as light on a dark screen, there is the alternation of light and darkness. When pulses are heard, there are the audible pulses, and the silences between the pulses.
By making the spaces between the pulses comparatively long, the tempo of the poem can be made very slow, giving the possibility of a true poetic adagio or largo. The pulses can be extended , giving a length which it's impossible to implement in the established use of accented syllables. The pulses will never be completely regular in length, but pulses made up of monosyllabic words will give a close approximation. Pulses can be very varied in length, since pulses may be made up of words (of very varying lengths), fragments of words and groups of words. The words within a pulse will show the established rhythm of accented and unaccented syllables, but this rhythm is subsidiary to the rhythm of pulses and spaces.
An example:
Some comments on the poem: the word 'now' is a pulse which is always widely separated from other pulses, and so gains emphasis. The avenue is far from shooting now but previously it was not so. Different sensory sensations are separated, for example, 'dark' from 'quiet,' an aspect of light from an aspect of sound. Compressions, obvious rather than subtle, are used to create single pulses: 'allthosecrowds' and 'beforebeingcompressed.' A comment on something which has nothing to do with pulse: it's most common for a poem to use normal punctuation, not unusual for a poem to use no punctuation at all. In this poem, I adopt a middle way. Sentences are shown as beginning by the use of a capital letter.
Changing the order of lines in a poem or changing the order of individual words in order to give a version with greater impact or interest. Restoration gives an order closer to everyday, non-poetic speech or writing. For example, the restored order: subject and verb (1), object of the verb (1), subject and verb (2), object of the verb (2), subject and verb (3), object of the verb (3) may be subjected to rearrangement to give: subject and verb (1), subject and verb (2), subject and verb (3), object (1), object (2), object (3).
Object (1), object (2), object (3) I refer to as the successors. The rearranged poem may be more effective because the successors produce rhythmic 'thumps' or blows and bring the poem to a decisive end. Alternatively the successors may rhyme and the rhymes are now brought into close proximity. There are various other possible advantages, such as making much clearer similarities (or contrasts) in subject and verb (1), (2) and (3).
Another hypothetical example may have exactly the same subjects and verbs as in the example above but only one successor, which has reference to all the subjects and verbs. In this case, the rearranged scheme is: subject and verb (1), subject and verb (2), subject and verb (3), successor.
Languages change and words acquire new meanings, but new meanings need not come about by some natural process. Individuals can attempt to introduce deliberate changes in the meanings of words. In the past, some of these changes have failed to gain currency, whilst others have succeeded. 'Second meanings' are extension in the meaning of some words. Language has many, many functions, but one of them is as an essential weapon in the battleground of competing ideas. This being the case, I see every reason to try to reshape language, not in large areas, but in the case of just a few particulars. (This is not at all vulnerable to the philosophical 'private language argument,' referring to a language which other people can't in principle understand.)
Semantic force or semantic impact
Words (and concepts) with semantic impact are used, heard, or read with an accompanying experience of intensity, forcefulness or significance, for example, in a visceral or sensuous, an elevated or deeply anxious way. Although a person knows the meaning of many words, or can use many words meaningfully, words with semantic impact are particularly 'meaningful.'
A person's active vocabulary and passive vocabulary are distinguished in linguistics. A person's active vocabulary (words which the person actually uses) is smaller than their passive vocabulary (words whose meaning is known but which the person does not use.) Words with semantic impact are few in comparison with the active vocabulary and are subject to change in a more striking way. Words which once had semantic impact for the person may no longer possess it. Words may acquire semantic impact quite suddenly. Words may be used with semantic impact on one occasion and not on another, owing, perhaps, to distraction or preoccupation. Words may be read or heard as well as used with semantic impact.
Words which may have semantic impact are of the most varied kind. Examples are 'danger,' 'snow,' 'poignant,' 'classification' and 'mathematical set.' Where a word has rich connotations - 'danger,' for example - then using it with semantic impact involves using the word with its more intense connotations. So attention is focussed on more immediate, real dangers, such as the experience of being in an active war zone, rather than more distant, if still real dangers, such as 'the dangers of smoking.' It may be direct and intense personal experience which gives a word semantic force, such as the experience of being shelled or shot at, but this is not a necessity.
Intellectual excitement may give to words, and such entities as equations, real semantic impact. The mathematician who devised the concept of the mathematical set wrote that when he thought of the word 'set' he experienced a chasm. The great botanist Linnaeus, who devised the binomial system of nomenclature, very likely used the word 'classification' with semantic impact.
In a good poem, words are used with greater semantic impact. In a poor poem, they are used with no semantic force, in a routine or inert way. Deviance or deviation (established terms in stylistics, associated with the Prague school of linguistics) is particularly associated with poetic language. However, deviance can characterize mediocre poetry. Semantic impact is a better 'indicator' of good poetry than deviance. This is not to imply that the more vivid the language, the greater the poem. There is a vividness in Seamus Heaney's poetic descriptions of growing up on a farm in Ulster, and a vividness in some of Robert Frost's descriptions of rural New England, which cannot be matched in the work of, for example, Rilke.
I do not have the space to argue for the greater stature of Rilke here, but will simply state my conviction that a great poet conveys wider semantic force than a lesser poet, or conveys aspects of semantic force which, it can be argued, are more fundamental. It is for this last reason that I myself regard Kafka as so important amongst twentieth century imaginative writers of prose, despite his restricted range. He has given massive semantic force to such an unexpected word as 'unzugaenglichkeit,' 'inaccessibility,' 'unapproachability,' which appears in the section 'Before the Law' in 'The Trial' and which underlies the whole of his novel 'The Castle.' Another, more familiar example in Kafka is 'verhaftet,' 'arrested.' The writer, however, who used words with greater semantic force than any other is, of course, Shakespeare.
A work of tensile art contains contrasting elements, the elements in tension (please see the General Glossary for further discussion of this term.) 'Tensile' has a primary linkage with the scientific term, as in 'tensile strength' and 'tension' doesn't have a linkage in most circumstances with emotional stress or tension.
The elements which are in tension are very varied. These are only a few:
My 'unit' poems, demonstrated and described in the page on concrete poetry, have a bleak or horrific content linked and contrasted with the serene and symmetrical shape.
I regard Kafka's work as an example of tensile art. There's the tension between the style, lucid and serene, and the baffling or bizarre or mysterious events which are described.
Sustained or significant use of ambiguity will make a work tensile, as in my poem in memory of two poets:
Hart Crane
who jumped to his death from a ship bound for New York
Attila Jozsef
who threw himself under the wheels of a train at Balatonszarszo
The sea waved
and parted
and hurried along
the long platform.
So long!
He leaped over the rails
and by the track,
as the platform steamed on,
deeper and deeper
he sank,
the sleeper.
The primary linkage is with Hart Crane and the ship from which he jumped. All the words can be applied to these. 'the sea waved' (the sea produced waves), 'parted' (the bow of the ship parted the waves), 'and hurried along/the long platform' (the long platform is the ship), 'he leaped over the rails' (the rails of the ship), 'and by the track,' (the wake left behind by the ship moving through the water), 'as the platform steamed on' (again referring to the ship.)
The secondary linkage is with Attila Jozsef and his suicide. The first four lines also refer to a departure on a station platform. 'He leaped over the rails' now refers to railway lines and 'track' to a railway track.' This reference to railways modifies the line 'as the platform steamed on.' Although the sense is straightforward, 'the ship sailed on,' the line can be taken as surrealistic too: 'the railway platform steamed on.' There's another, naturalistic, interpretation. The platform was shrouded in steam from steam trains. The platform 'went on,' that is, continued in time, unlike Attila Jozsef, whose life had ended.
Axis poetry introduces tensions of other kinds and can be regarded as a kind of tensile art, for example, the tension between the horizontal and vertical components. Please see the page on concrete poetry for further information about this technique - the page gives an example of a tensile poem - and also the entry in this glossary.
Compare a line of music, played by an instrument which can't produce more than one note at once, with a piece in many parts played by piano, or by full orchestra. Even if they are resonant, lines of a poem can generally be compared with the first of these. By the use of ambiguity and other techniques, resonance can be increased, and there can be the illusion - or more than the illusion - of a work made up of many parts, sounding simultaneously. There is, however, no necessary linkage between resonance and artistic quality.
Tensile art has certainly had precursors, but non-tensile writers have outnumbered
tensile writers. A writer may be versatile, encompassing, for example, the
comic as well as the tragic, the criminal underworld as well as a world of
aristocratic ease, without being a 'tensile writer.' A writer may be limited
in range, or comparatively limited in range and write tensile works.
The diverse elements in tensile art are presented simultaneously
rather than consecutively, so that a work which has an opening passage markedly
different from a closing passage will not necessarily be tensile.
In the case of poems I've written, I often give a timing in seconds below the poem. The timing doesn't give information as such about phrasing, the speeding up and slowing down of the voice when the poem is read, but I think that a simple indication of time can give valuable information. Put simply, if the timing I give is 46 seconds, I doubt very much if an adequate reading can be given if the poem is read in 36 seconds or 56 seconds. Even small divergences from the time can be significant, particularly, of course, for shorter poems.
In providing timings, I'm influenced by recordings of Classical music and the timings provided for each track on a Compact Disc. Comparisons between the timings for different interpretations of the same work, coupled, of course, with close study of the different interpretations, can be very instructive.
The name is a provisional one. This is a form of axis poetry in which there's a marked contrast between the vertical axis of the poem and the horizontal axis (or axes.) The vertical axis is made up of short, or very short, lines and the horizontal axis, or axes, is made up of long, or very long, lines. The architecture of the poem gives contrasts of spatial experience in reading the poem. The linkage is with the architecture of a cruciform church, which has transepts - wings of the building at right angles to the nave. The example here is blurred deliberately. The content - which would require disproportionate space to explain - is less important than the shape.
Unit
poetry
In Unit Poetry - a very exacting form of concrete poetry - characters,
spaces and punctuation marks are counted. These units are allotted the same
width, as is the case in a monospace font such as Courier new. (Most typefaces
have proportional spacing, so that, for example, the letter 'm' has greater
width than the letter 'i.' ) By exercising complete control over the number
of units in a line, there is complete control over the length of the line.
This allows new forms of concrete poetry. For example, I
have written poetry in which there is the same number of units in each line,
giving rise to a poem which has the appearance on the page (or other surface)
of a solid block, poetry in which the units increase and then decrease in
regular steps of four units, and poetry in which the first and the last line,
the second line and the penultimate line (and so on, to the centre of the
poem) have the same number of units. These lines are not only linked by length
but also by sound ('rhyme') and the second line in each pair completes the
sense of the first: This form is a particularly rigorous one.
'Zoning' belongs very much to the subtleties of analysis and interpretation. Zoning arises from the fact that in a poem which has lines of appreciable length and which has an appreciable number of lines, the first line and the last line will tend to be more prominent than the intervening lines and the beginning and end of each line will tend to be more prominent than the middle of each line. The poem will have a border made up of the first and last lines and the beginning and ends of lines. This is the exterior and the rest of the poem is the interior.
Position in the poem gives emphasis to the exterior but the poem may intensify this emphasis or reduce it -that is, introduce tension between prominence in placing and prominence in effect.
