Great question! I can think of various good metrical studies of individual poets, but not an overall history. Hopefully someone may chip in. I keep meaning to write something myself about the use of the choriamb in Pound and Bunting especially (though also e.g. Sisson); and more generally about the importance of quantitative metrics in modernist verse.
On your note 3, I find rhymezone very good in English, as it will allow you to do true rhyme, slant rhyme (as well as synonyms if a word needs changing) while also allowing syllabic and metrical restrictions on the search.
Yes I see what you mean, it's quite good. The French site also does synonyms and various other things and allows you to restrict or sort the search re: syllable count and grammatical form. It has lovely graphics showing you the various degrees of similarity. It was extremely useful anyway for the verse composition homework, which we have finally finished!
The Wase poem you quote does not seem like entirely free verse: the quoted lines appear to be all in dactyls, albeit in varying numbers. (I have been unable to find the rest of the poem online, so I cannot tell whether the rest of it may be different metrically.)
Thanks for commenting! You're right, this is one of the relatively more conservative examples of what we can broadly call Latin free verse at the period. The extract is not all dactyls, but it is dactylic in the technical sense which I think is what you mean: ranging from three to six feet in this part. I think that echos Wase's own comment too: rather than "filling out" the line to reach a hexameter or pentameter according to a set pattern, he's leaving these phrases at the length in which they come. Some other examples from the same time are much more of a jumble metrically speaking. Some also start off either in a recognisable metre or at least, as here, using recognisable elements of a metre, and then become freer as they go on. Some examples contain some identifiable specific lines -- the odd hexameter or iambic trimeter or whatever -- among a majority which aren't. Overall, the phenomenon is free verse in the modernist sense -- I mean, like Eliot's poetry, for instance, you can always hear metre in the background. It would certainly be fascinating to do a more detailed analysis of the various subtypes.
This poem has never been published, except for a short extract in my recent book, so you certainly won't find it online anywhere. I discuss a few other examples in the book as well. The manuscript has also not been digitised. I have published an edition of a different example of the phenomenon, a satiric poem, in the 2020 Bloomsbury "Anthology of Neo-Latin Literature".
Has a good history been written of changing metrical trends within the free verse line? From Pound to the present, let's say?
Great question! I can think of various good metrical studies of individual poets, but not an overall history. Hopefully someone may chip in. I keep meaning to write something myself about the use of the choriamb in Pound and Bunting especially (though also e.g. Sisson); and more generally about the importance of quantitative metrics in modernist verse.
I would love to read both of those!
On your note 3, I find rhymezone very good in English, as it will allow you to do true rhyme, slant rhyme (as well as synonyms if a word needs changing) while also allowing syllabic and metrical restrictions on the search.
Yes I see what you mean, it's quite good. The French site also does synonyms and various other things and allows you to restrict or sort the search re: syllable count and grammatical form. It has lovely graphics showing you the various degrees of similarity. It was extremely useful anyway for the verse composition homework, which we have finally finished!
The Wase poem you quote does not seem like entirely free verse: the quoted lines appear to be all in dactyls, albeit in varying numbers. (I have been unable to find the rest of the poem online, so I cannot tell whether the rest of it may be different metrically.)
Thanks for commenting! You're right, this is one of the relatively more conservative examples of what we can broadly call Latin free verse at the period. The extract is not all dactyls, but it is dactylic in the technical sense which I think is what you mean: ranging from three to six feet in this part. I think that echos Wase's own comment too: rather than "filling out" the line to reach a hexameter or pentameter according to a set pattern, he's leaving these phrases at the length in which they come. Some other examples from the same time are much more of a jumble metrically speaking. Some also start off either in a recognisable metre or at least, as here, using recognisable elements of a metre, and then become freer as they go on. Some examples contain some identifiable specific lines -- the odd hexameter or iambic trimeter or whatever -- among a majority which aren't. Overall, the phenomenon is free verse in the modernist sense -- I mean, like Eliot's poetry, for instance, you can always hear metre in the background. It would certainly be fascinating to do a more detailed analysis of the various subtypes.
This poem has never been published, except for a short extract in my recent book, so you certainly won't find it online anywhere. I discuss a few other examples in the book as well. The manuscript has also not been digitised. I have published an edition of a different example of the phenomenon, a satiric poem, in the 2020 Bloomsbury "Anthology of Neo-Latin Literature".