Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Seek and Find

Like many bloggers, I have fun looking at the different ways readers find this site.

Most of the time, it's pretty straightforward... people were looking for this blog, or for some particular poem. Or for a definition of "iambic pentameter."

So here we go:

Iambic pentameter is verse composed of five-footed lines--poetic pentapedes, if you will. The feet, in this case, are iambs, or pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables. "Iambic pentameter" is a good example of a phrase that is NOT iambic, and this fact has caused me to become rather stressed off and on, since it severely limits the possibilities for self-referential sonnets. However, all is not lost, because at least you can use iambic pentameter to describe its decidedly non-iambic rhythm: "The silly thing's an amphibrachic phrase."

At any rate, apparently one reader came here wondering whether or not Genesis is in iambic pentameter... and that set me to wondering, too.

Hebrew poetry uses very different structures altogether, but as it turns out, somebody has indeed translated Genesis into English blank verse.

But I can't really tell you much about it until my copy arrives in the mail.  =)

Meanwhile, I'm going to go look for some nice juicy leaves to feed my new pet pentapede.

No comments:

Post a Comment