I was a ham radio operator before I was a poet so I do “dots and dashes.”

“They fall…”

they fall
into the abyss of love
they fly
balanced
because they can
they kiss
until the dawn
shines it’s brilliant light
they love
and
are complete
again

Yes, that’s a good part what I’m saying, but to clarify about the metrical code, it’s about more than that — it’s a kind of holistic body/mind psychoanalysis of a such a poem’s rhythm that explores WHY a particular poem uses a particular rhythm at a particular place, and what the meaning of that rhythm right there is. Or maybe that is what you mean by “in all sorts of interesting ways.”

Anyway, that third level, the level of the unspoken coded meanings of the metrical passages where they appear, added on to the referential level and the scanning level, makes it even more distracting when listening to a poetry reading!

“harmony makes interesting things out of form as it exists in all its semi-hidden guises, and the harmonizing agent is never cognizant of whether the form is old or new, for only after the harmonizing agent does its work does the form become new”

Thank you.

This is also the point and impetus of the Multiformalisms book: http://www.textos-books.com/finch-schultz.html

He NEAR/ -ly leapt OUT/ of his SEAT/ with de-LIGHT

That’s a nice one.

The metrical phrase that jumped out at me was:

that the CURSE/ of the MET/ -ri-cal CODE/ kicks IN.

“Your poem” demonstrates, I think, what you are saying: individual lines in prose or verse WILL scan, and for a developed ear, MANY lines will independently scan in all sorts of interesting ways, but without the WHOLE ever cohering into a recognizable and harmonious rhythm. (and thus the acute listener’s ‘headache.’)

This phenomenon lends a great deal of confusion to the whole issue for many, and the phenomenon was a distant glittering of Holy Grail for the early Modernists, who thought it could be exploited in producing “new” music.

Even now, in the wake of all that heady, Modernist manifesto-ism, much confusion reigns, and T.S. Eliot’s positive declaration of a “revolt against old form” is still a siren call for would-be rebels and revolutionaries who would murder the gilt-edged anthologies of ‘old verse’ once and for all.

But “revolt against old form” is an empty phrase, because “old form” is not oppressing anyone—we rather need to “revolt against misguided criticism that calls on us to revolt against old form,” since harmony makes interesting things out of form as it exists in all its semi-hidden guises, and the harmonizing agent is never cognizant of whether the form is old or new, for only after the harmonizing agent does its work does the form become new; this was true when the first verse was written and will be true at the last.

Thomas