Laurence Perrine was a professor at Southern Methodist University and I acquired a battered copy of his book, SOUND AND SENSE. AN INTRODUCTION TO POETRY some time ago. I enjoy the poems he chose as well as his comments on poetry.
Here is an excerpt from his introduction to a chapter, Bad Poetry and Good which consisted of examples of good and bad poetry with the names of the poets omitted. His definition of good poetry is as follows:
" In a perfect poem there will be no excess words, no words that do not bear their full weight in contributing to the total meaning, and no words just to fill out the meter. Each word will be the best word for expressing the total meaning: there will be no inexact words forced by the rime scheme or the metrical pattern. The word order will be the best order for expressing the author's total meaning; distortions or departures from normal order will be for emphasis or some other meaningful purpose...The organization of the poem will be the best possible organization: images and ideas will be so effectively arranged that any rearrangement will be harmful to the poem."
These are stringent requiements and, as I read, I thought of the way I sometimes add unnecessary syllables to make the line flow. But I did feel proud because I do try to avoid distortions or forced "rimes".
Dr. Perrine then discusses three types of inferior poetry: sentimental, rhetorical and purely didactic but I will save that part for a later column.
I googled Laurence Perrine and discovered that his books are still available online if anyone is interested.
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The Perfect Poem sounds daunting, to say the least! The definition points out some areas I need to work on. I love having www.dictionary.com (and its Thesaurus function) as a resource to find additional words with comparable meanings with metrical feet, emphasis or syllables that fit the line I am working on!
Thanks for sharing!
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It is such a pity that on your page, in your column, the word "introduction" is spelled incorrectly. It makes the passer-by keep moving by.
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I am actually an editor and don't like this kind of mistake any more than you do! If you know how to remedy it, please let me know.
Thank you.
Judith
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Sounds like a good book. I haven't read it, but will look for it in a library - maybe they will have a copy.
Very interesting to read.
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A goodly sharing ...
and it's always of interest to me to find those books and articles that help us in our craft! Thanks for posting this and I'll watch for more columns of this nature. joy
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