my course, it has good poems

[pastwatcher]

I'm taking a linguistics course on poetic meter as it relates to linguistic constraints of stress. Apparently this includes rhymes and phonology, especially the study of slant rhymes, alliteration and other things. (My professor revealed today his motivation for studying poetry, which is that it organizes linguistic features and thus makes them easier to study. I find this intriguing. I wonder how many linguists would say that it merely skews the data and dismiss it--I think I'd take his side in such an argument.)

Anyway, I really like this poem by E.E. Cummings that he showed us. I haven't finished reading it, because I have to read each stanza about six times even to begin to grasp the meaning. Also there is math and diversions. But as I get it, it begins to draw together into a very pretty picture. I haven't yet figured out how deep the picture actually is.

If you don't click the link, at least read this:

"this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if(so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm"

even though it doesn't have much of the alliteration of the rest of the poem.

Comments

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

My professor revealed today his motivation for studying poetry, which is that it organizes linguistic features and thus makes them easier to study. I find this intriguing. I wonder how many linguists would say that it merely skews the data and dismiss it--I think I'd take his side in such an argument.

My impression is that linguists have been exploiting poetic data for generations - especially in phonology, and especially for historical work. It's less often useful for syntax, but again, there are times in historical work where one can find corroboration in poetry. I don't think any really good linguists would say poetry is useless, although they themselves might not have a use for it.

That said, poetry does skew the data a bit, particularly in the syntax/semantics sphere, where there's a lot of deliberate manipulation (and sometimes outright breaking) of the rules. I don't think it's so much that poetic data is inadmissable for linguistics, but rather that it has to be considered separately and on somewhat different terms. Lumping it in with non-poetic data would be potentially problematic (again, especially for syntactic research).

[pastwatcher]

Oh right, even I was supposed to know that--I forgot about the Homeric scansion reconstruction work. This answers a lot of my potential questions; thanks. :)

Do you want to be LJ friends? I've added you, but if you've already got too many friends pages to read, I can take it back. (I never get notified when people add me.)

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

No worries. :-)

I don't have a lot of friends pages to read, actually; I use my LJ more as a journal than a communications network, so most people don't realise I'm here.