words with zest

The newly established Australian Poetry Centre currently has an e-mag blog, called zest, which is publishing news and features on poetry. It is a sign of the changes that are happening.

One of the features is a short piece by me responding to some well-known words by Ezra Pound. I had to do this article quickly so it recycles some other things I've written, and develops some thoughts I've been working on for a while, about the poem on the page, about how the line works. I have been influenced by reading Rosemary Huisman's book, The Written Poem: Semiotic Conventions from Old to Modern English (Cassell, 1998), which is well worth your time. There is much to quote in her book: "The interrelating of sound pattern and visual line is so well established that modern poetry, even when without traditional metrical regularity or rhyme scheme, may encourage us to read in a certain way according to the line breaks."

Comments

genevieve said…
Good to hear about the zest blog, thanks Jill. I'll go read your article now.
04/08/2007, 18:46
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