Iambics march from short to long;-- With a leap and a bound the swift Anapaests throng
Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.
Poems are perfect for something to listen to while you're walking around because they don't take very long.
Poetry, first and foremost, is the lyric. It's the music.
The rhythmical unit of the syllable is at the back of all of it - the word, the phrase, the sentence, the syntax, the paragraph, and the way the heart moves when you read it.
I tried to make sense of the Four Books, until love arrived, and it all became a single syllable.
Prose is not so dependent on sound. The line of poetry, with the breaking of the line - to me, sound is the kind of doorway into poetry. And my sense of sound, or my ability to control it, lapsed or grew less.
Trochee trips from long to short; From long to long in solemn sort Slow Spondee stalks.
This is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word.
