Matthea Harvey’s poetry gives me no pleasure.

When I have to stop and re-read a text for meaning, I just don’t find it “delightfully interrupts any smoothly rhythmical reading…” Rhythm is never ‘smooth;’ the term ‘smooth,’ as in ‘smoothly rhythmical,’ is counter to the essence of rhythm; any rhythm may be consistent, but it is never, by definition, smooth. Smooth implies no rhythm at all. Any rhythm which becomes more interesting becomes less monotonous, but this is a truism. Puzzling over prose-meaning is not rhyhmic and can never be defined as such. An ‘interruption’ of a rhythm ‘interrupts what already interrupts;’ such an idea has no force; it’s a nullity. “Delightfully interrupts any smoothly rhythmical reading of the poem” is a phrase of no meaning.

I am ready to play any game. I am ready to try anything new. I am ready to look at something in advance of thinking on it, or to think before I look, if such a thing is necessary. Matthea Harvey’s poetry leaves me smooth. Very smooth.

Human existence depends on obligation, expediency, or pleasure. None of these exist in writing speech in lines.
Why then do we hear so much of the ‘poetic line?’ We traditionally paragraph our speech as a simple aid to comprehend the prose meaning; paragraphing is not necessary for comprehension; the framing of paragraphing doesn’t change the meaning; it is merely a helpful break for the eye in its purely mechanical job as information-gatherer. The art of paragraphing would hardly win an artist a major award. Even less important than paragraphing, when we are reading prose, is where lines happen to end.

If periods (sentences) caused line-breaks to occur, we wouldn’t have line-breaks. We would have very short paragraphs.

For instance:

Human existence depends on obgn., expediency, or pleasure.
None of these exist in writing speech in lines.
Why then do we hear so much of the ‘poetic line?’

Is really this:

Human existence depends on obgn., expediency, or pleasure.

None of these exist in writing speech in lines.

Why then do we hear so much of the ‘poetic line?’

These are 3 paragraphs. They are not 3 lines.

IN PROSE, THE LINE DOES NOT EXIST.

Now, we may ask, ‘what of prose poetry? Do lines exist in prose poetry?’

They do not.

Let us demonstrate. Let us assume the text above is prose poetry and we break it up thusly:

Human existence
depends on obligation, expediency, or pleasure.
None of these exist in
writing speech
in lines. Why then do we hear
so much of the ‘poetic line?’

If we break up prose into sentences, we are paragraphing. If we break up prose into fractured sentences, we are still paragraphing. Let us simply add space between the paragraphs. Thus, we have six small paragraphs:

Human existence

depends on obligation, expediency, or pleasure.

None of these exist in

writing speech

in lines. Why then do we hear

so much of the ‘poetic line?’

Strange paragraphs they are, but they are paragraphs, NOT lines.

Just as in our first example: merely by adding empty space, it becomes apparent that we are making paragraphs, not lines.

VERSE–where rhythm is paramount–introduces the line, BUT EVEN THE LINE ONLY EXISTS AS AN IDEA (AN EXPEDIENCY) BETWEEN THE IDEA OF FOOT (OR RHYTHM) AND THE STANZA–THE TRUE BODY OF THE LINE.

Prose is divided into sentences and paragraphs.

The line shares no role in this speech-division.

Sentences and paragraphs exist in prose; lines do not.

Punctuation can change meaning, and if the line-break does, it does so ONLY IN TERMS OF PUNCTUATION. There is no magic to a line-break, except perhaps to the extremely superstitious, who like to pretend they are being “poetic.”

I know of no contemporary poets who swoon over periods, or colons, or commas. Why then do we die with sighs upon the line-break?

Thomas
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I would enjoy reading your dissection of Sad Little Breathing Machine, which I personally find more conceptually juicy.
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