We are still a long way from knowing how to read the rhythms of free verse, a poetry which has been largely neglected by metrical theory. This study indicates the strategies of reading needed if justice is to be done to free verse's rhythmic versatility. The core of the book is an analysis of key French 20th-century poets and poems, including Perse's Éloges, Cendrars's Prose du Transsibérien, Dix-neuf poèmes élastiques, and Documentaires; Apollinaire's Calligrammes; Supervielle's Gravitations; and Reverdy's Sources de vent. Contemporary trends in the visual arts — Cubism, Futurism, Orphism, ph ... More

We are still a long way from knowing how to read the rhythms of free verse, a poetry which has been largely neglected by metrical theory. This study indicates the strategies of reading needed if justice is to be done to free verse's rhythmic versatility. The core of the book is an analysis of key French 20th-century poets and poems, including Perse's Éloges, Cendrars's Prose du Transsibérien, Dix-neuf poèmes élastiques, and Documentaires; Apollinaire's Calligrammes; Supervielle's Gravitations; and Reverdy's Sources de vent. Contemporary trends in the visual arts — Cubism, Futurism, Orphism, photography — are called upon as perceptual models to illuminate free verse, and a further perspective is added by the theme of travel and movement. In addition to the examination of the rhythms of free verse, and of its implications for our reading of regular verse, the book provides a study of modernist poetics.