Algo le agarró y le lanzó al aire. Pero en otro sentido seguía sentado junto al fuego…; podía verse a si mismo allí, una figura menguante en el circulo iluminado que empequeñecía por momentos. Los muñecos de juguete que lo rodeaban miraban su cuerpo con atención. Excepto la vieja: había alzado la vista, le miraba directamente a él y sonreía.
La luz brillante. Terry Pratchett
Por alguna razón, estás experiencias siempre suceden bajo la influencia de sustancias… Que el cerebro humano por sí solito pueda imaginar algo más allá de sí mismo es una idea no muy aceptable…
And here is when things GET A LOT DIFFERENT THAN IN SPANISH.
Whilst Spanish counts syllables and gives the poem a name based upon the number of syllables in a line[2] (verse); English counts the stressed[3] and unstressed and takes the order of them into account to call it a foot. English names verses after the foot.
<<In accentual-syllabic prosody the basic unit of poetry is the line, clearly visible on the page, which may be defined as ‘a single sequence of characters read from left to right’. Lines are analysed by breaking the metre, the rhythmic pattern, down into the repetition of a basic unit, a foot, and saying how many feet make up a line.>>
The poem handbook John Lennard. Oxford University Press, second edition 1996, 2005.
SYLLABLES OR NOT SYLLABLES
<<Poetry was spoken before it was written, and rhyme, the coincidence of sounds, has prehistoric origins in ritual, celebration, and memory training. Most Westerners learn nursery rhymes or children’s chants, and know a fair number of simple rhymes giving information (red sky at night, shepherd’s delight) or advice (if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em). […]. Vision is now our primary sense, and for many to hear clearly how rhyme works in a poem means seeing a rhyme-scheme. >>
The poem handbook John Lennard. Oxford University Press, second edition 1996, 2005.
Whatever. It doesn’t really matter at the moment. Iambic, pentameter or pentasyllabic, Alexandrian, or minor art verse, verses share a quality: they either rhyme or not and here is where light starts to shine upon the damned topic because rhyme is not just a sound thing. Or it is a sound thing but it is also something that CAN BE SEEN.
TO BE CONTINUED
[1] Called Alejandrinos, the quantum may care why.
[2] As usual, the verses can be popular or intellectual. A verse minor to 8 syllables is a minor art verse and a longer one a major art verse. In the end, one wonders why the heck musicians are to receive a Nobel in literature but such is Spanish; not English.
[3] Any need to complícate it even more? They’re called ictus.
En el alhajero del bosque, Con joyas de goma que sueltan esporas. Y gotas de vidrio que se evaporan. Los tesoros se suman y se suceden con la fortuna lluvia. Minucias de seda pobladas de oberones negro-amarilloque devoran las ropas de Titania. Uno tras otro se develan bajo las cortinas de frondas.
Do we use a measure tape in between the poem’s legs to measure its… between the legs? From armpit to armpit to measure its chest? What do you measure in a word bunch? We don’t count the number of characters to know how much space they use as designers do to fix the lay out.
And for knowing what to measure, we need conventions… or the small little agreements we humans use to name things[1] after. And this is going to be confusing for me since everything is a little different in Spanish.
FIRST CONVENTION
Poems don’t have paragraphs, they have stanzas[2]. Fine then, poem’s paragraphs are called stanzas or strophes. That there are a lot of inconvenient little details like “strophes are the first part of the Iliad[3] or that “strophes are used in free verses without rhyme” is something I will forget about. There is no need to bring up rhyme or no rhyme yet.
stanza /ˈstanzə/
I. noun
1. a group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem; a verse (is a verse a synonym of stanza dear Oxford?)
2. a group of four lines in some Greek and Latin metres.
SECOND CONVENTION
A line is a verse.
Yes, I know. Everybody knows this. Nonetheless, as Nuval Yoah Harari says; you might spit all the fancy words physicians and experts do and mess it up just because you don’t understand a blah of the really basic stuff by ignoring the basic words. I AM NOT TO IGNORE THE BASICS IN ORDER TO DO FALSIBIABLE.
verse /vəːs/
I. noun — [ mass noun ]
1. writing arranged with a metrical rhythm, typically having a rhyme
• a lament in verse
• [as modifier ] verse drama.
2. [ count noun ] — a group of lines that form a unit in a poem or song; a stanza
• the second verse.
3. [ count noun ] — each of the short numbered divisions of a chapter in the Bible or other scripture.
• we were each required to recite a Bible verse from memory.
• on the walls were framed verses from the Koran.
A bunch of lines (verses) becomes a stanza or strophe in every line mayor period break.
Very interesting… what’s a syllable?! Again very obvious, right. Explain it to me I dare you.
WHAT’S A SYLLABLE?
And I’m listening to my nephew playing whys game. Why is a syllable a sound? Why can sounds be represented by AN individual character like and “a” or a “g” but we set them together into “a sound” represented by a group of characters like “S.E.T.?
Fine. A SYLLABLE IS ONE SOUND.
TO BE CONTINUED
[1] We’re quite good fighting about this and that but also at getting together to create life complications.
[2] Look at my surprised face, not strophes but stanzas!
[3] Don’t crucify me, I don’t remember what classical book was mentioned. The point is that the name comes from somewhere and it is annoying to remember where from, in THAT super specific way. Poems have a structure and that’s the important part right now.
Los hombres y las mujeres de negocios y los abogados modernos son, en realidad, poderosos hechiceros. La principal diferencia entre ellos y los chamanes tribales es que los abogados modernos cuentan relatos mucho más extraños.Nuval Yoah Harari. Sapiens
¿Es la verdad tal y como la entendemos algo que sale de un individuo al que se le llama juez de justicia? ¿Qué pasa si la verdad tiene unos cuántos ceros extra? ¿Quién convence a este juez de cosas tan extrañas como la inocencia y la culpabilidad; las personas buenas haciendo cosas malas que no están tipificadas como delitos y las malas cometiendo delitos que no son exactamente villanías? ¿Quiénes nos venden objetos no comestibles, inútiles y de cualquier modo innecesarios como anillos de compromiso, juegos de realidad virtual, inteligencias artificiales y teléfonos celulares?
Puedo entender sin necesidad de discursos, la utilidad de una zanahoria… Un teléfono requiere realidades imaginadas mucho más extrañas que la realidad de mi estómago…
¿Qué cosa fantástica puedes inventar que tenga tanto poder como una constitución o un producto? Pásala bien inventando universos paralelos. Pasto kalo.
– origin late 15th cent. (denoting the branch of study dealing with metre): via Latin from Greek metrikos , from metron (see metre2 ).
metre2 /ˈmiːtə / ‹US› meter
I. noun
1. the rhythm of a piece of poetry, determined by the number and length of feet in a line
• the Horatian ode has an intricate governing metre
• [ mass noun ] unexpected changes of stress and metre.
2. the basic rhythmic pattern of beats in a piece of music.
• a dance song in fast quadratic metre.
• Prokofiev’s complex metres.
– origin Old English, reinforced in Middle English by Old French metre , from Latin metrum , from Greek metron ‘measure’.
CAN COMICS BE MEASURED WITH METRICS?
…Ah, good question. Thus, I [most] probably have a shellish answer for that. Particularly since I don’t know anything about metrics and the less about metrics in English. Spanish speaker, remember? However, here I go trying the impossible,
From the point of view of the above definition, NO. Metrics measure verses. Comics don’t have verses. Conclusion? Comics and poetry have nothing to do regarding metrics.
WHAT CHANGED FROM LAST ENTRY?
Are you just being Mary quite contrary, Merriam? Maybe…
Do you know this science procedure of establishing ways to prove something as false? Well, I’m running a mock trial of falsifiable. That’s, if I can. Maybe I can only make a bigger mess than the one I already started in last entry but one has to do in order to mess up.
Thus, we need to keep the statement:
comics and poems don’t have metrics as a similar feature at all
