“In any case, it seems scarcely credible that Swimmer963 is unaware that poetry has traditionally tended to have (perhaps even by definition) a lot of metrical regularity and that many people strongly prefer it to be that way, so on your reading jimrandomh’s comment seems to convey little actual information.”
Apparently I was more unaware than I thought. Almost all the poetry I’ve read recently doesn’t rhyme or fit into iambic pentameter, to the point that when I read poetry that does, it almost feels weird. (Granted, a lot of what I read is medieval and translated into English from Latin. Maybe it rhymed originally.)
My understanding of Latin poetry (pretty dang limited) is that it’s based around meter dictating use of long and short syllables (rather than stressed and unstressed, as in English poetry), and that rhyme wasn’t much used (it’s too easy!). So it probably was in meter in the original Latin, but a different sort of meter.
“In any case, it seems scarcely credible that Swimmer963 is unaware that poetry has traditionally tended to have (perhaps even by definition) a lot of metrical regularity and that many people strongly prefer it to be that way, so on your reading jimrandomh’s comment seems to convey little actual information.”
Apparently I was more unaware than I thought. Almost all the poetry I’ve read recently doesn’t rhyme or fit into iambic pentameter, to the point that when I read poetry that does, it almost feels weird. (Granted, a lot of what I read is medieval and translated into English from Latin. Maybe it rhymed originally.)
My understanding of Latin poetry (pretty dang limited) is that it’s based around meter dictating use of long and short syllables (rather than stressed and unstressed, as in English poetry), and that rhyme wasn’t much used (it’s too easy!). So it probably was in meter in the original Latin, but a different sort of meter.
Meter != iambic pentameter, though!