The Rhythm of Poetry, the Poetry of Rhythm (BA Seminar)

מקצב פואטי ופואטיקה של מקצב

Spring Semester, S/W 14-16.

In this class we will discover the ways a poem enacts its temporality through various levels of rhythm, sound and meaning. Rhythm is a multidimensional term whose manifestations reach well beyond poetry. We will start by grappling with definitions of rhythm, while recognizing the temporal dimension in many of them. Meter is one of the main ways in which rhythm has been realized in poetry, and so the first part of the semester will be devoted to poems in which rhythm is expressed via the poem’s meter. In the second part, we will turn to poems which are not metrical in the strict sense but are nevertheless and inevitably highly rhythmic. This will involve reaching into other levels of the poem’s workings, from the distribution of monosyllabic words, to alternating line lengths and even density of imagery. We will define the term “poetic pace” as a subset of the poem’s rhythmics, and broaden rhythm to include rhythmic phrasing. We will end the semester with a consideration of the implications of the kind of temporal experience that poetry offers, and gesture towards an ethics of listening, of which attention to poetic rhythm is a literalization.

Students with a keen interest in poetry are especially encouraged to attend.