Sunday, April 4, 2010

Open Exit

Is there a way out?
Is there a way to escape
The sea of sorrow?
Walk the path of harmlessness
Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

2 comments:

Dan Gurney said...

Nice. I love the unexpected use of rhyme in syllabic poetry.

Jim714 said...

One of the challenges facing syllabic poetry in English is how to securely shape a line. In metrical poetry lines are often, usually, formed by consistent use of rhythmic feet; so even when rhyme is not used (as in blank verse) the metrics signals the listener where the lines break. By definition syllabics does not have this option. There are two choices left, as far as I can tell. First, grammatical phrasing (similar to how French and Japanese poetry defines a line), and rhyme. Because of the absence of metrics, these other two ways of shaping a line become more significant for the syllabic poet.

Best,

Jim