Poetic Rhythm Research Articles

Song 7:2–6 [Eng: 1–5] as a Symphony of Poetry, Metaphor, and Passion

Song 7:2–6 is (in)famous for how the man describes his beloved, from feet to head, with one seemingly ridiculous metaphor after another. While the aesthetic sense of these metaphors may seem odd to westerners, it was highly unlikely to be such for its original audiences. Thus, the fundamental question for biblical scholars, especially those concerned with metaphor is: How does the poet employ the visual similarities in the metaphorical imagery to allow readers/hearers access to how the man both perceives and conceptualises the physical beauty of his beloved? In other words, how can we as readers take the metaphors seriously without obliterating the metaphorical imagery? This article seeks to answer this question by employing a complexity approach which integrates poetic rhythm (additionally borrowing the concept of deceptive cadence from music), linguistic approaches to poetic parallelism, the use of emotion in lyric poetry, and metaphor analyses. This symphony of analyses hopes to explain how the metaphors function as a unity within the poetry’s rhythm, building toward a peak to express the man’s desire and excitement for his beloved. It concludes by offering an interpretation of the final verse’s interpretively difficult description of the woman’s hair as crimson, explaining how the woman’s head as Mount Carmel during a fiery sunset serves as a fitting conclusion to the poem that provides a befitting climactic closure for conveying the man’s desire for his beloved.

한시의 시적 리듬과 번역 - 韓譯과 日譯을 중심으로 -

한시의 시적 리듬과 번역 - 韓譯과 日譯을 중심으로 -

Mohammad Ebrahim Jafari: Aesthetics of Painting in Poetry

The article is devoted to the creative heritage of the outstanding figure of Iranian culture — poet and artist Mohammad Ebrahim Jafari (1940–2018). The novelty of the presented research is determined by the almost complete absence of scientific works devoted to this issue: basic biographical facts, analysis of artistic language and the specific imagery of M. E. Jafari are poorly represented even in the Persian language. The purpose of the work is to identify the features of the national-cultural horizon of the synthetic genre combining painting and poetry developed by Jafari. To achieve this goal, it was necessary, firstly, to trace the poet’s biography; secondly, to clarify the nature of the artistic images created by him at different stages of his life and to analyze the original method of the author’s initiative as a way of artistic enrichment of the new synthetic genre. The multifaceted nature of the research subject determined the need for an interdisciplinary approach and the use of a complex of methods such as biographical, hermeneutic, and comparative typological. The author of the article has studied all the video materials and interviews of the poet published to date, his paintings, as well as a collection of selected poems. The author of the article also translated, for the first time, from Persian all the poetic material presented in the text. The study showed that M. E. Jafari, who does not differentiate the forms of creativity, easily transfers the stylistic techniques of his paintings to poems, which fills his lyrics with different shades of colors and smells. Poetic rhythm can be seen in his paintings, at the same time, abstract pictorial images embody the most significance for the poet in terms of acuity of perception, creating images of space and time as a unique experience, extremely concrete in its strength and depth. The masterly combination of abstract expressiveness and specificity of the sensual image makes it possible to attribute the deeply personal artistic creativity of M. E. Jafari to the cultural wave of new poetry, which meets the basic principles of the philosophy of Iranian modernism.

Prosodic Contradictions in Mira Jee's Poems

Meera Jee while doing his creative experiments in the traditional structures of poem, tried to give a new face to the Urdu poem. While using metres (Bahur)he followed Hindi and Punjabi patterns. His poetic temperament is similar to Behr-e-Mutaqarib. He used Maqtu syllables of Mutadarik along with Mutaqarib in an innovative style. He used the metres with a special technique. His all poems are in these metres and their dissection is possible along with different and diverse Zahafaat( A term of Ilm-e-Uruz). He combined the Behr-e-Mutaqarib Aslum, Ashram, and Maqbooz Aslum. At times, he used the Syllable of Behr-e-Mutadarik i.e. Fa-e-lun. Because of these techniques, all of his controversial poems can be factorized. His innovative sense of taste liked the experiments. As he was, actually in search of a new poetic rhythm that is why he broke down the Prosodic restrictions. Meera Jee tried to slow down the pace of this metre. He courageously tried to join the Zahafaat of the closest meters in order to create a new meter. These two meters are closest to each other because Abul Hasan Akhfush created Behr-e-Mutaqarib out of Behr-e-Mutadarik. Because of the usage of Zahafaati faces of the meter, he seems to breathe freely in the poems and seems to be experiencing towards more freedom by creating long lines of poems. The existence of musicality in his inner being and his understanding of the syllables of meters made him use the syllable of Fa-e-lun along with Fe-lun. In his poems, Meera Jee using freely the Zahafaat of two meters i.e. Behr-e-Mutaqarib created out of Behr-e-Mutadarik, and by remaining close to the prevailing structure of Prosody tried to experiment with new system of Prosody by using Zahafaat under his self-created rules, thus paving the way for a new meter for his poems.

Working with Fluids in Mary Collier's "The Woman's Labour"

Abstract: This essay centers Mary Collier's work with fluids as part of her lifelong profession of nurse and washerwoman to the content and form of her poem, "The Woman's Labour" (1739). By giving textured specificity to Collier's labor, my effort is to make meaningful her work itself, rather than only her working-class identity, to her poetic practice. The essay reviews the arguments that body fluids provide the feeling material for poetic rhythm. I then draw a parallel between the movement of body fluids as a mechanism for poetic rhythm and the regular movement of body fluids as necessary indicators of health in eighteenth-century understandings of the body. As Collier depicts the experience of gendered work in her poem, the specific work of maintaining healthy bodily flows leads to intimate fluid connections with the people the working woman cares for, and these connections produce sensations of bodily change and alienation. As Collier works with poetic form to manipulate the rhythmic feelings of bodies and move us towards troubling intimacies akin to the experiences of caretaking, her poetry becomes a form that holds the rhythms of bodies in fluid relationships.

Characterizing the visualization design space of distant and close reading of poetic rhythm.

Metrical and rhythmical poetry analysis is founded on the systematic statistical analysis and comparison of sonic devices (e.g., rhythmic patterns) that emerge from a combination of pre-established aesthetic and structural rules and the poet's abilities and creative genius to convey a given message adhering to the said constraints. These rhythmical patterns, which have been traditionally obtained by means of a careful close reading of the poems, in a process known as "scansion," can now be obtained and made visible by automatic means. However, the visualization literature is still scarce on approaches that allow an insightful close and distant reading of the rhythmical patterns in a poetry corpus. In this work, we report our initial efforts in characterizing of the visualization design space of distant and close reading of poetic rhythm. By employing a digital version of a corpus of 11,268 verses originally written by the Spanish poet and playwright Federico García-Lorca (1898-1936), we could craft several prototypical visualizations representative of the inherent complexity of the problem which we expect to employ in future user studies and that we share here with the rest of the community to foster further discussion around this interesting topic.

Introduction

Introduction

Jagger, Jasmine. Rhythms of Feeling in Edward Lear, T. S. Eliot, and Stevie Smith

At the heart of this book are a very alert, informed listening to the music of poetry and a focus on how it communicates and contains emotion. Attentive to various kinds of worry and intense anxiety – Edward Lear’s ‘morbids’, T. S. Eliot’s ‘nerves’ and Stevie Smith’s ‘scratches’ – Jasmine Jagger examines how each of these three poets draws on imagery and acoustic devices that might appear ridiculous, but in fact serve to communicate emotional disturbance beyond the bounds of what is considered ‘normal’. In particular, Jagger shows that an edgy interplay between the often unsettling rhythms of speech and the measured predictability of metre allows poets to hear and feel in their work emotions that they are impelled to communicate, and lets readers hear and feel these too. This is an unusually writerly book, and, in its nuanced sense of verse, an outstanding study. While not engaging with the work of Rita Felski and a number of other American-influenced writers on ‘affect’, Jagger takes some of her theoretical bearings from Isobel Armstrong, Derek Attridge, Christopher Ricks, Ann Stillman and other (mainly British) critics alert to the fusion of emotion and word-music. Jagger is not afraid to draw on biographical, anthropological and psychological material as she articulates her close readings and close listenings to poems as apparently different as ‘The Dong with a Luminous Nose’, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ and ‘Not Waving But Drowning’. Without in any way reducing her chosen poets to one template, she shows how, by exploring ‘individual tendernesses as dramatized by poetic rhythm’, these poets demonstrate the ways in which ‘poetic composition can also indicate an attempt to translate affect into a bodily state. In so doing, affective poetics becomes a way for poets to plumb their own depths, reconnecting with, and becoming tender to, their emotional complexity’ (p. 202).

Rhythmic Counterpoints

Various approaches to rhythm or poetry have presented impediments to the theorisation and study of poetic rhythm. These include choices regarding the etymology of rhythm, the dismissal of relations between music and poetry, and the tendencies to see rhythm either as contrary to metre or conflated with it. This essay explores options and alternatives that enable understandings of rhythm in accord with our experience of music and poetry. A consideration of the affinities and comparability of both arts reveals viable entryways into poetic rhythm, including the practices of early modern poetry, particularly in Spanish.

:Modernism’s Metronome: Meter and Twentieth-Century Poetics

:<i>Modernism’s Metronome: Meter and Twentieth-Century Poetics</i>

Wang Anshi and Song Poetic Culture

Wang Anshi and Song Poetic Culture

ON RHYTHM IN POETRY

The subject of the article is the rhythm in the verse. The theory of alternation and its suitability forpractical use is examined. A rhythm based on rhythmic strokes (ictuses) and their sequential occurrence in time ispreferred. The issue of interictus, which are important in forming the poetic rhythm, is also touched upon.

The Evanescence of Lyric: A Review of John Wilkinson’s Lyric in Its Times: Temporalities in Verse, Breath, and Stone

In Lyric in Its Times (2019), John Wilkinson reads lyric poetry for its “repeatable evanescence,” which Wilkinson characterizes as lyric poetry’s ability to initiate disruptive aesthetic events for its readers across historical moments. In order to suggest the dynamic lives that poems lead as aesthetic object-events, each chapter of Lyric in Its Times offers close readings that combine the analysis of poetic rhythm with attention to poems’ material rhetoric of stone, rock, and glass. Readings center on poets of the New York School and St. Ives, Cornwall but reach back to the Renaissance and often discuss poetry alongside visual art. Wilkinson sketches lyric poetry’s aesthetic forcefulness across time and elucidates how objects like stone contribute to aesthetic effects.

Vana ja uus kvantitatiivne formalism: kõrvutused ja väljavaated (Moskva Lingvistiline Ring ning Stanfordi Kirjanduslabor) / “Old” and “New” Quantitative Formalism: Comparisons and Perspectives (The Moscow Linguistic Circle and the Stanford Literary Lab)

Kümme aastat tagasi leidsid Franco Moretti ja tema kolleegid oma uurimismeetodile mahuka määratluse – kvantitatiivne formalism, vastandades seda vene formalismile, mis nende arvates oli kvalitatiivne. Formalistliku teadusprogrammi tuumaks on kunstilise teksti struktuurilis-funktsionaalne analüüs, mida formalistid ise nimetasid morfoloogiliseks, ja seda võib pidada kvalitatiivseks. Kuid väide kvantitatiivse formalismi uudsuse kohta vastab tõele vaid osaliselt. Selle tõestamiseks keskendub autor kahe Moskva Lingvistilise Ringi liikme – Boriss Tomaševski ja Boriss Jarho – kvantitatiivse poeetika käsitlustele ning pöörab erilist tähelepanu Jarho leiutisele, mida hiljem nimetati kauglugemiseks. Kahe kvantitatiivse formalismi võrdlusel pole mitte ainult ajaloolis-teaduslik tähtsus, vaid ka metodoloogiline väärtus, kuna see tutvustab palju lähenemisviise, mis osutuvad tänapäeva digihumanitaariale kasulikuks.&#x0D; ---&#x0D; Ten years ago, Franco Moretti and his co-authors described their research method as “quantitative formalism”, in contrast to Russian Formalism of the 1910s and 1920s. The structural and functional analysis of poetic texts is the nucleus of the formalist agenda, and it can indeed be considered “qualitative”. However, quantitative formalism’s novelty depends upon narrowly construing “formalism” as it was understood by the Petrograd association Obshchestvo izucheniya poeticheskogo yazyka (Society for the Study of Poetic Language) or Opoyaz. Other formalist groups had previously approached the question of quantitative formalism, but this fact is not known to many scholars for whom the canon is limited to the Opoyaz variant of formalism presented in Tzvetan Todorov’s anthology (1965) and the later collections of formalist essays, from the “standard” published by Ladislav Matejka and Krystyna Pomorska in English in 1971 to the recent collection of Russian Formalists in Estonian translations edited by Märt Väljataga in 2014.&#x0D; To demonstrate the historical development of quantitative analysis within Russian formalism, this essay focuses on the approaches to quantitative poetics developed by Boris Tomashevsky (1890–1957) and Boris Yarkho (1889–1942). Both Tomashevsky and Yarkho were members of the Moscow Linguistic Circle (MLC), co-founded by Roman Jakobson in 1915; the two scholars were recommended for membership in the MLC by Jakobson himself and elected unanimously at the same meeting on 21 June 1919. In 1960, Jakobson called Tomashevsky’s approach to verse “an example of the longest and, until recently, perhaps the most spectacular ties between linguistics, in particular the study of poetic language, on the one hand, and the mathematical analysis of stochastic processes on the other”. This approach “gave surprising clues for descriptive, historical, comparative, and general metrics on a scientific basis”. For example, Tomashevsky pioneered a statistical method of -his own invention that compares empirical indicators of verse rhythm with a theoretical model. James Bailey aptly called this approach “the Russian linguistic-statistical method for studying poetic rhythm” (1979).&#x0D; His colleagues in the MLC recognized the importance of Tomashevsky’s quantitative verse studies at MLC meetings in 1919–1921. A collection of his essays was published with the title On Verse (O stikhe, 1929). However, later anthologies have included only those sections of his essays that do not contain statistics, charts, diagrams, or tables. There are no book-length monograph studies devoted to Tomashevsky in any language, and his name is less frequently mentioned than other formalists’. To a certain extent, Tomashevsky remains “le formaliste oublié”, as Catherine Depretto has recently put it (2018).&#x0D; In his groundbreaking article on Yarkho published in Tartu in 1969, Mikhail Gasparov pointed out how Yarkho applied statistical methods with broader applicability than the study of versification alone. He used statistics for researching almost all aspects of the language of poetry and belles-lettres, motivated by a total quantification of poetics. In the paper, special attention is given to Yarkho’s then-novel approach of comparing many texts using a limited number of indicators. Specifically, he conducted a diachronic analysis of 153 five-act tragedies from 23 authors, using only four formal features: the number of scenes in the play as the measure of mobility of its action, the total number of characters in the play, the number of scenes with a particular number of speaking characters, and the standard deviation from the mean number of speaking characters in a scene. This is nothing else but an early example of “distant reading”, a term coined by Moretti many decades later.&#x0D; The birth of new quantitative formalism outside Russia invites us to re-evaluate the history of Russian Formalism in toto. Yarkho, Tomashevsky, and their followers offered a plethora of ideas for quantifying literary evolution and individual literary works, defining specific aspects of literature that justify this approach, as well as meaningful conclusions which can be drawn from the resulting calculations. On the one hand, this re-evaluation is critical for understanding the historical development of Russian Formalism. On the other hand, a comparison of the historical and modern versions of quantitative formalism offers methodological insights that are relevant for researchers in contemporary digital humanities.

The appearance of (o) and (3) as short vowels in Kurdish classic poetry and Jzerri and Nali as an example

In Kurdish language both vowel sounds/o:/ and /3:/ are treated as two long vowels. they both occur at the end of the syllable. They lengthen the syllable to an open one. This research paper which is entitled as (The appearance of (o) and (3) as short vowels in Kurdish classic poetry and Jzerri and Nali as an example) is a practical analytical research paper. It is an attempt to prove that sometimes these two vowels may appear as short ones. This justify that the classical Kurdish poetry has its own poetic rhythm and the rhythm is linked to both short and long syllables. While researching about Kurdish classical training balance state of the musical rhythm of their poems, they consider these two sounds as short ones. For the pompous, the researcher has taken two famous classical poets:(Jizeeri and Nali) as samples to justify that these two sounds can appear in the sound lab to short vowels. For proving that these poets have used clear and balanced musical rhythm, the researcher has chosen certain Betts in both Jizeeri and Nali's poems. That clarifies how they have treated with these two vowels as short ones, and the texts are read as rhythmical one and recorded if PRAAT program is applied on. This program is specific for analysis the physical appearance of the sound of the language so that to see how the length and shortened of these two sounds arise in other place that are used by these two poets and through this program sound how the shortness of both vowels arises in their poems. This research paper consists of an introduction and two sections. In the introduction part, lights are shed on the vowel sounds and PRAAT program reveals how the sounds of Language are analyzed. The first Section presents the cases where the vowel /o:/ appears and short vowel by Nali and Jzeeri and purpose behind this phenom are explained similarity section to explain the case where the vowel /3:/ appears as a short vowel with the two poets. Finally, a number of concluding points are introduced.

Тувинская песенная ритмика в свете общетеоретических категорий

The current stage of knowledge on Tuvan folk music allows outlining the transition from the descriptiveness to using the modern music theory categories. This paper proposes an approach to the analysis of musical and poetic rhythm tested on the material of folk songs of the peoples of the Volga region. The sound-time process in the intonation of songs by Tuvan performers consists of equal periods of time, referred to in classical theory as “mora”. This unit serves as the basis for all other forms of organization of the musical rhythm of a Tuvan song. Thus, the hierarchical scale of musical rhythm is built by summation, i.e., it is opposite to the verse scale formed by division. This means that the Tuvan song rhythm is organized according to the time-measuring principle and represents a kind of quantitative system. Rhythmic cells are combined into melodic and poetic lines, into poetic quantitative systems called meters. In Tuvan songs, lines of four cells prevail, corresponding to an eight-syllable verse. The correlation of the musical process with the syllabic structure of the verse in the musical and poetic process of Tuvan songs is found at the level of the primary grouping of a uniform pulse. A syllable can be sung both for each “step” of the pulse, and stretched or sung for two, three, four (etc.) moras. A complete catalogue (index) of both fixed and theoretically possible rhythms is built from the rhythmic schemes of the lines.

The influence of poetic and musical rhythm on the perception and comprehension of an educational text by an Ancient Greek student

The article presents the results of the historical and psychological reconstruction of educational reading in an Ancient Greek school. The purpose of this reconstruction was to identify the psychological mechanisms of influence of the musical and poetic rhythm on the student's personality, to determine the pedagogic potential of the poetic text as a means of raising, to reveal the psychological mechanisms of the activity of the text as a subject of educational reading. The educational effects of the rhythm of the mythological and poetic text in the context of the formation of the socio-cultural identity of an Ancient Greek student are revealed. The psychological mechanisms of the participation of poetic and musical rhythm in the organisation of the practice of reading in an Ancient Greek school are described. It is noted that the poetic rhythm of the text suggests a special way of participating in the teacher's educational reading. Based on the reconstruction, it is concluded that the rhythmically intense educational mythological and poetic text has the ability to evoke an emotional response in the student, influence his unconscious attitudes, and impose emotional and semantic dominants of perception and understanding of what is written. The most important task of modern education is found in the formation of student's sense of rhythm in the process of educational reading. It is noted that this sense of rhythm in a modern school can be formed by referring to educational texts and texts used in youth culture.

Проектування системи автоматизованого генерування віршованих творів

Features of designing a system of automated generation of poetic works, which opens up new opportunities for artistic speech and show business, especially the preparation of poems and songs have been considered. Quite often lyrics without special content become successful due to the lack of complex plots, as well as due to the unobtrusiveness and ease of perception by listeners. Well-known literature sources and available software products that can generate poetic works by combining different methods and algorithms are analyzed. It has been established that none of them is able to ensure the content and uniqueness of the poetic work at the same time, especially in the Ukrainian language. The existing approaches to the generation of poetic works are analysed, among which the relevant is a method based on templates, generation and testing, evolutionary algorithms and the method based on specific cases. Peculiarities of generating poetical works, first of all rhyming rules, types of strophes, poetic rhythms and sizes have been investigated. An approach to automated generation of poetic works using evolutionary algorithms and a method based on specific cases have been developed. Their combination resembles a sequence of actions for creative personalities when creating poems or writing lyrics. Peculiarities of neural network organization for automated generation of poetic works have been considered. It is proposed to perform neural network training using the method of inverse propagation and using a genetic algorithm. The principle of operation of algorithms for finding optimal solutions which contain such consecutive stages as initialization, evaluation of solutions, population selection, evolution of solutions, is analysed. Their interaction and various opportunities for neural network learning have been investigated in detail. An algorithm has been developed according to which the software application will analyse the poetic works offered by the user and generate new variants of it on the basis received from the neural network of logically connected words or lines of the verse in the poem. The user can edit both the components of the poem and the generated poetic works, and thus can train the neural network. The specification of requirements to the software application has been developed, the basic requirements to the user interface are defined, and also potential classes of users who will use it are established. Keywords: computational linguistics; Artificial Intelligence; neural network; genetic algorithm; optimal solution.

Rhythmus (Rhythm)

The lexeme Rhythmus has a long history of its own. In the context of Goethe’s thought, it needs to be approached via both his theoretical discussions of the term and his handling of rhythm in his literary work. Goethe conceives of rhythm in terms of its materiality, and its major philosophical opportunity is the intense connection that it offers between subject and object. Goethe’s attitude to meter—that is, rhythm organized for the purposes of poetic production—was ambivalent: although he mastered any number of different verse forms, he remained suspicious of poetic rhythms that were too metronomic. The creative tension of rhythm is an implicit theme in various works and is explored through two examples in this entry: the poem “Der Musensohn” (1774/1800; The Son of the Muses) and the character Mignon from the novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795–1796; Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship).

Translating the Hebrew Psalms to be Sung: The 2010 Revised Grail Psalms, a Case Study

This article explores the theme of “translating poetically organized discourse to be sung.” The 2010 English translation of the Hebrew Psalms, entitled The Revised Grail Psalms: A Liturgical Psalter (RGP), is presented as a case study. The Hebrew Psalms, for the most part, were composed to be sung, yet more often than not, they are translated to be read. Such translations are primarily characterized by the absence of poetic rhythm, despite the plain evidence and significance of poetic rhythm in the Hebrew. The RGP, on the other hand, privileges the rhythmic dimension of the Psalms. As a result, the RGP is said to be remarkably “adaptable to the exigencies of different musical settings,” and more importantly, eminently singable. Nonetheless, the challenges of translating and formalizing a text according to a given rhythmic principle are in practice formidable, for when translators set out to feature a lyric’s rhythmic dimension, its semantic, rhetorical, and syntactic art is often found lacking. This article examines some of the principal reasons the translators of the RGP chose to re-emphasize the Hebrew Psalms’ rhythmic art and, more importantly, how those translators negotiated some of the more problematic translation challenges that ensued from that choice.