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| Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down. - Robert Frost 1937 The line between poetry and prayer is so fine as to be invisible. - Karl Shapiro A few years back I was reading a book about poetry forms when I ran across a sentence that said something like "the counterpoint of the consonants running against the vowels." "Poetry has counterpoint?" I asked myself in amazement. Being a life-long student of music, I fully understand how counterpoint is one of the life elements of classical music. By relating my musical knowledge to poetry, counterpoint opened the door to a whole new world of self-expression for me. Instead of writing with "stick people", my affectionate name for the notes on the staff, I've learned to use words to express other musical concepts such as tone, rhythm, ballad, beat, meter, refrain, rondeau, consonance, caesura, climax, elegy, refrain, stanza, cacophony, and of course, theme. | |
 Kathy Swantee's watercolor of my poem Featherbrook
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