Sunday, February 13, 2011

Poetry

  
To be perfectly honest, I’m not really in the mood for writing about love as I’m no longer sure I know what it means. And anyway, I’ve already written about it here

So I’ve turned my thoughts to poetry. After all, most poets have written about love so it’s a fitting subject for le Saint Valentin. The problem is, it’s also a vast subject, so I’ve had to limit myself to a handful of famous French poets, most of whom were tortured, angst-ridden, debauched souls with a penchant for drugs, alcohol and infidelity. So they obviously knew what they were talking about…

I wanted to begin with a brief description of poetic form. However, after several hours reading articles about it in books and on the Internet, I am thoroughly confused. I understand that most French poetry is syllabic and I know what an Alexandrine is (a twelve-syllable line probably named after the twelfth century Alexandrine romances in which Alexander the Great was the hero). But my eyes begin to glaze over when I read of mute ‘e’s being elided and hypermetrical when followed by vowels, and the significance of caesura, hiatus and hémistiches…

So let’s stick to the poets. And I apologize in advance that half of my post seems to be an html link. I have no idea why but I am not going to stay up all night trying to put it right. Just don't click - it will get you nowhere...