Letter to the Editor

The true meaning of poetry, with help from Ovid

Monday, March 29, 2004

Dear Sir,

This is in reference to the story about the visit of the writer Leonard Dilbert to Triple C School (23 March). 

He is correct in noting that poetry is "compressed, highly selective," but poetry in its primeval form is much more precise than any prose, even the most excellent and inspiring. 

What is poetry? The word "poetry" comes from Greek and was transmitted through Latin into the various European languages. 

Literate Greeks and Romans had a common understanding of what constitutes a poem; in general, that understanding today has been lost.

A single line from the Roman poet Ovid will indicate the difference between the classical mind and contemporary writers. Line 25 book II of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," with translation:

"A dextra laevaque dies et mensis et annus."
"From the right and the left, day and month and year."

This does not appear to be so remarkable or brilliant until one sees the structure of the line. 

Every syllable in it is either long or short, and the whole line is composed of sequences of long and short syllables. 

To illustrate, the forefinger consists of one long segment followed by two short ones; the thumb has two equal segments. 

Following the example of the Greeks, we use the word "dactyl" to designate a sequence of one long syllable followed by two short ones; similarly, we call two long syllables a "spondee." 

The line above was written as a series of dactyls and spondees, as illustrated below. The long syllables are shown by capital letters.

A DEX / TRA LAE / VA que di / ES ET / MEN sis et / AN NUS

The line has six divisions, or metrical feet; it is called hexameter. 

The poet has "measured" every line so that there is an exact number of syllables, mathematically precise. 

To write in this way, even for a person cognizant of the classical languages, is extraordinarily difficult, but every single line of Ovid's great poem was written thus. 

For the Greeks and Romans, a precise numeral structure was a defining characteristic of poetry and clearly distinguished it from prose. 

Some poets in English, notably Shakespeare and Longfellow, wrote in metrical form, but after the time of Walt Whitman in the nineteenth century, few writers have conformed even to simple patterns, such as iambic pentameter. 

For those who love noise and call it modern music, or those who love chaos and call it modern art, it is not surprising that these folk, destitute of the great intellectual traditions of Western civilization, fail to understand poetry in its ancient and pristine beauty. The words of the Roman poet Horace are still relevant: 

"Scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim."
"We, the unlearned and learned alike, are writing poems."

Don Bodden Ryan
Tampa, Florida

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