Modulars: Poems

This volume offers five poems, each written on a different pattern according to the principle of "the syllabic module", a sound system developed by the author. The sense of contemporary verse is often organized on variable axes, and this book aims to organize sound patterns in a corresponding way. It offers metrical modes somewhat analogous to the structure of serial music, in which the randomness of instances in free verse is subordinated to audible patterns, without returning to the simple recursions of meter. In the poems of "Modulars", the line unit is bound both horizontally by syllable-count in the line and vertically by recursive series from line to line. At the same time, the line, within its limited number of syllabic alternatives, remains free, as free verse is free, to choose, at every point, the particular alternative for the particular line.