Rhythm – The Poetician

“Then There’s Rhythm”

(If you can keep your ancient Greek FEET)

In her book 52 WAYS OF LOOKING AT A POEM published by Chatto and Windus in 2002 Ms Ruth Padel chooses as her first poem a piece called ‘Mrs Noah: Taken After the Flood’ by Jo Shapcott. Here it is: I can’t sit still these days.

On Firting Feltonics and Flash-Fryed Feet

a Diatribe upon the Tyrrany of the ‘Iambic Pentameter’ and its Importunate Rabble of Ambiguous ‘Feet’

James Fenton’s book, An Introduction to English Poetry, first published by Viking in 2002, is a fairly modest 130 pages or so. It is an entertaining but in many ways inept little book. It is concerned more with the question as to ‘what makes poetry’ than with the question as to ‘what makes good poetry’;