Formal Poetry Research Articles

Narrative and Poetic Art in the Book of Ruth

Although the Book of Ruth is in many respects a classic example of biblical Hebrew narrative, with its stripped-down style and the opaqueness of its character's inner lives and motivations, there are two examples of formal poetry in the book (1:16–17 and 1:20–21). Biblical poetry works with a very different set of literary conventions than narrative, and by taking note of those conventions, we can see the distinctive contributions made by these poems to the book as a whole.

An expert system for the composition of formal Spanish poetry

The present paper presents an application that composes formal poetry in Spanish in a semiautomatic interactive fashion. Automatic Spanish Poetry Expert and Rewriting Application (ASPERA) is a forward reasoning rule-based system that obtains from the user basic style parameters and an intended message; applies a knowledge-based pre-processor to select the most appropriate metric structure for the user's wishes; and, by intelligent adaptation of selected examples from a corpus of verses, carries out a prose-to-poetry translation of the given message. In the composition process, ASPERA combines natural language generation and CBR techniques to apply a set of construction heuristics obtained from formal literature on Spanish poetry. If the user validates the poem draft presented by the system, the resulting verses are analysed and incorporated into the system data files.

The Formal Poetry Reading

School of Art Institute of Chicago. Fifty or so people are sitting in uncomfortable folding chairs facing a lectern. On lectern are two bottles of Southern Comfort. On a chair nearby, facing audience, sits a man with his head down, hunched into his shoulders. Some recognize him as Alan Dugan, 1961 winner of Yale Younger Poets Prize, author of Poems (the prize-winner), of subsequent Poems 2 in 1963 and a few other works, and winner of a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. The face before us is much older-it is, after all, now more than two decades later-than that on jackets of two volumes, but it is recognizable, if lined, indeed cragged, and with a twist to mouth. The audience is very quiet as Dugan moves to microphone. He says something. The voice is hoarse, hardly audible, barely understandable, but heard-attention is focused, as in quiet moments just before a string quartet's recital. He reads some poems from Poems, and opens first of bottles. His movements are very slow. He says little between poems. Both Poems and Poems 2 are dedicated to Judy, his wife, daughter of photographer and painter Ben Shahn, and herself a painter. My wife went to high school with her and is here in part for that reason. Dugan turns up single-shot. think of Nelson Algren's story A Bottle of Milk for Mother, when Lefty Bicek complains that man he killed wouldn't buy a pint, like a citizen, but bought only those single-shots with his paycheck. Dugan reads some His voice grows stronger. He makes small jokes, mostly at his own expense. Now he stops, and looks around. Someone makes a request. He says: I don't like that one any more. He responds more favorably to a few other requests, but not to all. ask for the poem about guy floating down river, about Alexander Great. am ashamed that can't remember name of poem and apologize. He laughs, says something like, oh hell, no one can remember names of my poems. He shifts his body slightly, uncaps second single-shot and drinks it. Then he reads How We Heard Name, a poem have always found quite wonderful. He stops reading and autographs a few copies of his book, bought by people who must have been children, even babies, when he wrote poem.

The Mishnah: a new translation

eminent Judaica scholar Jacob Neusner provides here the first form-analytical translation of the Mishnah. This path-breaking edition provides as close to a literal translation as possible, following the syntax of Mishnaic Hebrew in its highly formalized and syntactically patterned language. Demonstrating that the Mishnah is a work of careful and formal poetry and prose, Neusner not only analyzes the repeated construction but also divides the thoughts on the printed page so that the patterned language and the poetry comprised in those patterns emerge visually. With meticulous methodology and with rare stylistic beauty of expression, Neusner. . . has produced an incomparable translation of the Mishnah, both new and innovative, which reflects the genius of the original Hebrew idiom. Neusner penetrates the Tannaitic mind, capturing its spirit, its subtle nuances, and its poetic cadences. . . A most impressive volume which transcends all previous versions of the Mishnah.-Choice The overall effect is a linguistic purity and simplicity which strives to capture not only the substance, but the spirit and style of the Mishnah's universe. . . . An artful and impressive addition. . . . It deserves not only admiration but serious attention as well.-Charles Raffel, Judaica Book News The work is significant because for the first time it makes available to student and scholar alike a rendition of the Mishnah which attempts to convey not only the substance of that document, but the highly patterned and formalized language which Neusner believes is the key to comprehending its contents.-Daniel H. Gordis, Hebrew Studies

VI. The Poems (2)

Levens referred to the twentieth-century cult of energy and emotion. In fact the most influential English poet of the first half of the century, T. S. Eliot, was marked by a learned allusiveness which was typically Hellenistic and Alexandrian. It would not be true to say that the Hellenistic poets have in any way ousted their predecessors in the affection of classical scholars, though we have seen major editions of Callimachus by R. Pfeiffer and Theocritus by A. S. F. Gow. But more attention has been paid to them and there have been more monumental studies of the Hellenistic Age as a whole.Wilamowitz in his two-volume Hellenistische Dichtung in der Zeit des Kallimachos (1924) covered the poetry at length in masterly fashion, and in the same year Ph. E. Legrand in Le Poésie Alexandrine produced a little gem of sensitive interpretation. Wilamowitz included Catullus in his survey showing the debt of his more formal poetry to Hellenistic models.