Re: Off topic: New Year's frivolity

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

Very good, Carl and Robert. (A fine kettle of fish though when the tech
wizards also outpace the Eng. Lit. profs.) Yes, it's blank verse. Well,
it scans. The first few lines just came to me after I had been editing
something where three and a half feet popped up in what was supposed to
be straighforward prose (not the first time that had happened). Then I
worked on it a bit to finish it off. And kind of you not to mention the
hysteron proteron in the penultimate line: should be

some feet, a line, or half a dozen more

But what, what does one call something that is what it discusses? The
only other example I can think of is Swinburne's Roundel beginning "A
roundel is wrought..." (Fowler cites it under technical terms; I
shouldn't want anyone to think I READ Swinburne.) I mean a specific term,
like anacoluthon, hysteron proteron, hendiadys, and the like. I'm sure
there's one, but I cannot think of it.

But I hate to tell you, there are people out there who do not know what
scansion means. They cannot hear meter. What's that image in Boethius? As
deaf to it as a donkey to music? I've caught misquotations by the dozen
because they just didn't scan, so I knew it couldn't be what the poet
wrote. O tempora!
Patricia