An aria in an opera - Handel's 'Ombra mai fu,' for example - gets along with an incredibly small number of words and ideas and a large amount of variation and repetition. That's the beauty of it. It's not taxing… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
The iambic pentameter owes its pre-eminence in English poetry to its genius for variation. Good blank verse does not sound like a series of identically measured lines. It sounds like a series of subtle variations on the same theme. — James Fenton Copy Share Image
Among those today who believe that modern poetry must do without rhyme or metre, there is an assumption that the alternative to free verse… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in modern spelling… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
There is no objection to the proposal: in order to learn to be a poet, I shall try to write a sonnet. But the… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
Poetry carries its history within it, and it is oral in origin. Its transmission was oral. Its transmission today is still in part oral,… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
A glance at the history of European poetry is enough to inform us that rhyme itself is not indispensable. Latin poetry in the classical… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
In song the same rule applies as in dramatic verse: the meaning must yield itself, or yield itself sufficiently to arouse the attention and… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
'Love' is so short of perfect rhymes that convention allows half-rhymes like 'move.' The alternative is a plague of doves, or a kind of… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
Lyric poetry is, of course, musical in origin. I do know that what happened to poetry in the twentieth century was that it began… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
At somewhere around 10 syllables, the English poetic line is at its most relaxed and manageable. — James Fenton Copy Share Image
In rap, as in most popular lyrics, a very low standard is set for rhyme; but this was not always the case with popular… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
The Italian word 'stanza' means 'a room', and a room is a good way to conceive of a stanza. A room, generally speaking, is… — James Fenton Copy Share Image
