Perhaps the opaque/transparent distinction is helpful here. Meter allows us to enter into the dream of the poem, a more instinctive, imaginative place…
yes, it perhaps has deep roots in shamanic techniques of ecstasy, where repetitive sound & motor drive trance, induce us into the "imaginative place" where gods & ancestors reside. [I'm drawing from John Haule's survey of the ethnography in his Jung book]
the rhythmic rule is, on the one hand, an extra demand, unnecessary as the peacock's tail, so the poet displays linguistic facility when abiding by the rule. it's like reciting a speech while juggling. Geoffrey Miller has a whole chapter on this sort of thing in The Mating Mind, the roots of artistic performance in sexual selection.
the rhythmic rule, on the other hand, might help verse flow for the practiced versifier. the rule in effect renders prosody autonomic, so frees up neural resources for word selection, narrative logic, et cet. and once we get into the rhythm, it induces us into a trance state where words come easily and we, shaman-like, narrate to the tribe from our place in the Dreamworld.
ha! that's the ideal, I guess. mostly we're chewing the end of our pencil, alone at the escritoire.
Monsieur Justice sounds highly worth reading, real insightful!
I think that is precisely why jazz works: like metre, the jazz standards, for example, are the stricture without which the emotional content would not flourish meaningfully. (Much jazz is remarkably conservative in that respect, happily.)
Perhaps the opaque/transparent distinction is helpful here. Meter allows us to enter into the dream of the poem, a more instinctive, imaginative place…
yes, it perhaps has deep roots in shamanic techniques of ecstasy, where repetitive sound & motor drive trance, induce us into the "imaginative place" where gods & ancestors reside. [I'm drawing from John Haule's survey of the ethnography in his Jung book]
the rhythmic rule is, on the one hand, an extra demand, unnecessary as the peacock's tail, so the poet displays linguistic facility when abiding by the rule. it's like reciting a speech while juggling. Geoffrey Miller has a whole chapter on this sort of thing in The Mating Mind, the roots of artistic performance in sexual selection.
the rhythmic rule, on the other hand, might help verse flow for the practiced versifier. the rule in effect renders prosody autonomic, so frees up neural resources for word selection, narrative logic, et cet. and once we get into the rhythm, it induces us into a trance state where words come easily and we, shaman-like, narrate to the tribe from our place in the Dreamworld.
ha! that's the ideal, I guess. mostly we're chewing the end of our pencil, alone at the escritoire.
Monsieur Justice sounds highly worth reading, real insightful!
I think that is precisely why jazz works: like metre, the jazz standards, for example, are the stricture without which the emotional content would not flourish meaningfully. (Much jazz is remarkably conservative in that respect, happily.)