Quotes & Sayings About Prosody

I will not make a sonnet from
Each little private martyrdom;
Nor out of love left dead with time
Construe a stanza or a rime.

We do not suffer to afford
The searched for and the subtle word:
There is too much that may not be
At the caprice of prosody. — Joseph Auslander

We say God and the imagination are one ...
How high that highest candle lights the dark. — Wallace Stevens

All poetry, as discriminated from the various paradigms of prosody, is prayer. — Samuel Beckett

Courses in prosody, rhetoric and comparative philology would be required of all students, and every student would have to select three courses out of courses in mathematics, natural history, geology, meteorology, archaeology, mythology, liturgics, cooking. — W. H. Auden

The legend of our times, it has been suggested, might be "The Revenge of Failure". This is what Envy has done for us. If we cannot paint well, we will destroy the canons of painting and pass ourselves off as painters. If we will not take the trouble to write poetry, we will destroy the rules of prosody and pass ourselves off as poets. If we are not inclined to the rigors of an academic discipline, we will destroy the standards of that discipline and pass ourselves off as graduates. If we cannot or will not read, we will say that "linear thought" is now irrelevant and so dispense with reading. If we cannot make music, we will simply make a noise and persuade others that it is music. If we can do nothing at all, why! we will strum a guitar all day, and call it self-expression. As long as no talent is required, no apprenticeship to a skill, everyone can do it, and we are all magically made equal. Envy has at least momentarily been appeased,and failure has had its revenge. — Henry Fairlie

When I was a med student, the first patient I met with this sort of problem was a sixty-two-year-old man with a brain tumor. We strolled into his room on morning rounds, and the resident asked him, "Mr. Michaels, how are you feeling today?" "Four six one eight nineteen!" he replied, somewhat affably. The tumor had interrupted his speech circuitry, so he could speak only in streams of numbers, but he still had prosody, he could still emote: smile, scowl, sigh. He recited another series of numbers, this time with urgency. There was something he wanted to tell us, but the digits could communicate nothing other than his fear and fury. The team prepared to leave the room; for some reason, I lingered. "Fourteen one two eight," he pleaded with me, holding my hand. "Fourteen one two eight." "I'm sorry." "Fourteen one two eight," he said mournfully, staring into my eyes. And then I left to catch up to the team. He died a few months later, buried with whatever message he had for the world. — Paul Kalanithi

I suppose I'm saying that defiance is actually part of the lyric job — Seamus Heaney

Rhythm must have meaning. — Ezra Pound

What line breaks add to prose prosody is a connection between eye
and ear which emphasizes the nature of the language by ... creating
units of intent and emphasis, and by contouring the meloding pitch
changes in the narrative-line. — Diane Wakoski

Grammar, which is the art of using words properly, comprises four parts: Orthography, Etymology, Syntax, and Prosody. — Samuel Johnson

I teach writing courses and first of all, I teach my students what prosody is. — Theodore Sturgeon

If I looked at some of these pieces as if this project was not spoken-word but just short anthology, I probably would have fussed with some of the sentences, you know? Syllabication and prosody and such crap. Because the printed word is etched in stone. But for reading purposes I accepted this book of texts in the manner in which I wrote them, no need to fuss. Most of the shorter stuff was written as poetry. Meaning lots of white space on the page. — Richard Meltzer

She swore in good mouth-filling oaths, but never smutty ones, and that was uncommon. She knew the prosody of profanity ... she knew the tune, as well as the words. She was not a raving beauty, but she had fine eyes and a Pre-Raphelite air of being too good for this world while at the same time exhibiting much of what this world desires in a woman, and I suppose I gaped at her and behaved clownishly. — Robertson Davies