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Thread: How do you define "free verse"?

  1. #31
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    A complicated way to say "verses organized without a metric pattern" will not help anyone. As soon, Jane Doe come, she will ask you what do you mean by lines? Or form? Or all other terms included. A workable definition is often generalisation, maybe you can get any particular poem and think why exactly that poem would not be a poem or would not be a free verse. Be socratic about this.

    It must be breakthru, but to the entire world, Frye is just a footnote in the history of literature but I doubt the irrelevancy of the author was directed about the devices he used in the text, rather in the impact of the text on culture, which is beyond the author. About this, I will quote Eliot who said he always thougth Yeats metrics were wrong until the day he listed the guy in irland and discovered, he Eliot, was the wrong one.

  2. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by AuntShecky View Post
    I'm still looking for a clear definition of "free verse," a workable guideline that will assure me whether lines I've written are in fact a poem and not disjointed prose.
    You will not find it if you continue to think that lineated "prose" is actually prose.

    Quote Originally Posted by AuntShecky View Post
    It's fuzzy thinking, if not equivocation, to state that one can immediately distinguish free verse from prose, to announce-- like the Supreme Court Justice asked to define pornography-- "I know it when I see it." Dismissing the issue by stating that one's reaction to a piece of work is "subjective" is a cop-out, to yours fooly's way of thinking
    I've stated very clearly that one's subjective reactions are not useful for meaningful classifications that are acceptable to a society trying to communicate via a shared language. The Supreme Court Justice's statement about pornography is proof positive of that, since there would be nothing to stop him from labeling any work that features sex as pornographic, including films like Irreversible, In the Realm of the Senses, or books like Lady Chatterley's Lover and Ulysses? However, one CAN immediately distinguish free-verse from prose if one merely concentrates on the formal, extensional, objective elements and, I repeat, these are the only useful methods for classification.

    Quote Originally Posted by AuntShecky View Post
    Perhaps the emergence of free verse is a cognate of the revolution in the arts which demanded a complete overhaul in form with technological advances. For instance, the birth and refinement of photography more or less marginalized the previous prominence of representational painting.
    The emergence of any new art-form, aesthetic, style, form, etc. is often a reaction to changes in socio-cultural contexts, but they can also simply be reactions to (and against) the art of the past. Sometimes, it's easier to start a new tradition than it is to live up to those of the past. Bloom has eloquently described the process by which poets begin by imitating their predecessors and then develop by misreading/rejecting them.

    Quote Originally Posted by AuntShecky View Post
    Although I am grateful to the responses in this thread, let's see if we can't come up with a workable definition of "free verse"
    We already have workable definitions:

    free verse
    noun Prosody
    verse that does not follow a fixed metrical pattern.(Dictionary.com)

    free verse
    noun
    verse whose meter is irregular in some respect or whose rhythm is not metrical (Merriam-Webster)

    To further understand the term, it's helpful to have definitions of verse:

    1. a line of metrical writing
    2. a : metrical language c : a body of metrical writing (as of a period or country)

    (Merriam-Webster)

    verse
    [vurs] Show IPA noun, adjective, verb, versed, vers·ing.
    noun
    2. a succession of metrical feet written, printed, or orally composed as one line; one of the lines of a poem.
    3. a particular type of metrical line: a hexameter verse.
    5. metrical composition; poetry, especially as involving metrical form.

    (Dictionary.com)

    So, let's take verse as "metrical line" and free-verse as "non-metrical line." What does that leave for free-verse? The line. Any attempt to redefine free-verse as anything other than lineated literature without meter is an attempt to reinvent the wheel. It's not complicated. Those in this thread who disagree are getting caught up in personal, subjective, intensional, connotative associations with what poetry is and all it serves is to dump mud in a clear stream. Stop it.
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  3. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    A complicated way to say "verses organized without a metric pattern" will not help anyone. As soon, Jane Doe come, she will ask you what do you mean by lines? Or form? Or all other terms included.
    What will help them is to say "verses organized without a metrical pattern" and then point to examples of what terms like "line," "meter," "form," etc. is. If they ask what a "line" is, I'll point to many lines of poetry and say "line," and many prose paragraphs and say "not line," until they get it. Form is a generalized abstraction of varied content. I can use metrical examples (ba-BUM ba-BUM ba-BUM ba-BUM ba-BUM is a "form" of meter called "iambic pentameter), or a rhyme scheme that goes ABBA is a form of rhyme, or a 14-line poem with certain rhyme schemes is a fixed-form called a sonnet, and the type of formal rhyme scheme determines what kind of sonnet it is, etc.

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Frye is just a footnote in the history of literature but I doubt the irrelevancy of the author was directed about the devices he used in the text, rather in the impact of the text on culture,
    Firstly, Frye was not really one of the "new critics." His pioneering work on Blake (Fearful Symmetry) clearly discusses what "beliefs" Blake is expressing allegorically in his works. The Intentional Fallacy was coined by Wimstatt and Beardsley and taken up by Brooks and had predecessorial echoes in Eliot, Empson, and Richards. The entire concept of authorial intent has had many varied takes on it in the 20th Century, and various critics have embraced or rejected it to various extents. Barthes, eg, coined the term "Death of the Author," but what's most understood about that is that Barthes was really trying to emphasize context/intertextuality as opposed to the romantic notion of authors being these divinely inspired being separated from their cultural/historical context.

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    You sticking to an english word limitation dated to the XVIII century does not mean anything.
    You citing one French author you clearly have an affinity for does not mean anything either. You can't make reality go a different way by changing definitions. Baudelaire's "prose poems" are no closer to poetry just because you call them such.

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Baudelaire (among many others, as he is not the only to do such thing) is an authority. Not you. It is Baudelaire who give a damn for what you think and there is more than one bridge made of people claims in a site. Your definition must deal with Baudelaire and all questions that his Prose poetry pointed, pretending you can dismiss it simply talks against you.
    I believe I've studied poetry long enough to be considered some kind of authority. Nonetheless, my definitions are supported by almost every single textbook and dictionary and other authoritative reference I can find. That you cite an author whom "challenged the limits" of poetry and prose no more alters their extensional qualities and definitions any more than John Cage "composing" 4'33" changed the definition of music.

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Because it is not poetic.
    Says you. I say it's poetic, and since we're all exalting subjective, connotative interpretations of language, my "definition" of what is poetry and prose is as good as yours or Baudelaire's. After all, apparently we don't need to classify by pointing to objective qualities.

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Seriously? How a metaphor "is the same" as textual style and even to say, an aesthetic experiement that produced several texts are the same thing?
    It's not about the metaphor, it's about the fact that Dickinson was trying to "define" poetry in a way which only had meaning for her. Textual style can create new classifications, but it does ipso facto completely change old ones, and when you have two things that are diametrically opposed that are given different labels, like poetry/lineated VS prose/non-lineated, then you can't make them "go together" just by playing off the connotations of either term. It's the same thing as my thin fat man.

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    The proposition of "Prose poems" by baudelaire is exactly a way to expand the understanding what poetry is. He understood it so well that he was claiming the use of poetic language was possible in prose. And voillá, he proved his claims (and of Poe, Mallarmé, and many others) by producing several prose texts with clearly poetic devices. He just proved Poetry is certainly not just a poem or what is written in verses.
    We don't need to expand what poetry is. The first fallacy in Baudelaire's "experiment" is that there's such a thing as "poetic language," and there's not. Poetry has been written in every language from the highest, most esoterically learned diction, rhetoric and form (eg, Milton) to the lowest, most commonly understood diction, rhetoric and form (eg, Burns). There is poetry that is allegorical and symbolic and highly metaphoric and poetry that says what it means with no recourse to metaphor. So it's a complete myth that there's such a thing as "poetic language," as almost every kind of writing that is found in poetry can be found/utilized in prose and was probably done so (somewhere) before Baudelaire.

    Now, what you CAN say is that there are some types of writing/style that are MORE COMMON in poetry than in prose, but these are connotations, associations, NOT the things that denote and define poetry to begin with. Baudelaire may use all the devices most commonly found in poetry and reject all of those most commonly found in prose, but, again, this makes for poetic prose, not actual poetry. So, no, Baudelaire proved no such thing.
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  4. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman View Post
    What will help them is to say "verses organized without a metrical pattern" and then point to examples of what terms like "line," "meter," "form," etc. is. If they ask what a "line" is, I'll point to many lines of poetry and say "line," and many prose paragraphs and say "not line," until they get it. Form is a generalized abstraction of varied content. I can use metrical examples (ba-BUM ba-BUM ba-BUM ba-BUM ba-BUM is a "form" of meter called "iambic pentameter), or a rhyme scheme that goes ABBA is a form of rhyme, or a 14-line poem with certain rhyme schemes is a fixed-form called a sonnet, and the type of formal rhyme scheme determines what kind of sonnet it is, etc.
    My suggestion is for Aunty to post here a poem where She thinks my be prose and from try to tell here why she choose to break the lines, the relevancy of that breaking for the poem rythim, etc. If she can do it, she will see it is a poem and not prose.

    Firstly, Frye was not really one of the "new critics." His pioneering work on Blake (Fearful Symmetry) clearly discusses what "beliefs" Blake is expressing allegorically in his works. The Intentional Fallacy was coined by Wimstatt and Beardsley and taken up by Brooks and had predecessorial echoes in Eliot, Empson, and Richards. The entire concept of authorial intent has had many varied takes on it in the 20th Century, and various critics have embraced or rejected it to various extents. Barthes, eg, coined the term "Death of the Author," but what's most understood about that is that Barthes was really trying to emphasize context/intertextuality as opposed to the romantic notion of authors being these divinely inspired being separated from their cultural/historical context.
    Second?

    You citing one French author you clearly have an affinity for does not mean anything either. You can't make reality go a different way by changing definitions. Baudelaire's "prose poems" are no closer to poetry just because you call them such.
    I think you need to understand something. It is not poetry because i call them such. Way before I was born it was called poetry. There is several authors and critics that call it poetry. One of them, a critical authority as Baudelaire. You cannot dismiss him with a shrugging, objectively he is a major part of history. Ignoring him is a major mistake.


    I believe I've studied poetry long enough to be considered some kind of authority.
    And some people believe in god. Good for them. But overall, you are just one more student of poetry, that studied nowhere as enough and is being ridiculous by dismissing another critical authority as Baudelaire with a shrug. You need to do a lot more than this.

    Nonetheless, my definitions are supported by almost every single textbook and dictionary and other authoritative reference I can find. That you cite an author whom "challenged the limits" of poetry and prose no more alters their extensional qualities and definitions any more than John Cage "composing" 4'33" changed the definition of music.
    That is an ontrageous and ridiculous lie. Several people do not consider "your definitions" true. Formalists dont. Baudelaire don't. Poe dont. Coleridge dont. Valery does not. Borges dont. And Eagleton even goes to say that the boundaries between prose and poetry are vague enough. His definition of poems by the line breaks is only possible in modern western (altough, several poets didn't exactly controled the line breaks and such), but simple fail. This is a poem:

    GilgameshTablet.jpg

    We certainly cannot use line breaking here, so we cannot exactly, as we do not even know how it sounds, discern the metric and use "what is left" according to him. Yet, it is an Epic Poem. His definition works well to study typical poetry in a classroom,but that is all. Even the definition is put to test. Finnegans wake is fictional, verbally inventive moral and most likely, Joyce (and his helpers) decided where the line ends. And it is prose.

    Says you. I say it's poetic, and since we're all exalting subjective, connotative interpretations of language, my "definition" of what is poetry and prose is as good as yours or Baudelaire's. After all, apparently we don't need to classify by pointing to objective qualities.
    We do not choose with objective qualities to fit to a defintion, like you are doing.

    It's not about the metaphor, it's about the fact that Dickinson was trying to "define" poetry in a way which only had meaning for her. Textual style can create new classifications, but it does ipso facto completely change old ones, and when you have two things that are diametrically opposed that are given different labels, like poetry/lineated VS prose/non-lineated, then you can't make them "go together" just by playing off the connotations of either term. It's the same thing as my thin fat man.
    Do not insist with the Dickison thing. She just said a metaphor about what is poetry to her. Prose Poems are not such thing they are a textual style meaning a team with poetic devices without verses. They are not similar at all.

    And You are being ridiculous, not only you can use diametrically opposed terms to build an expression with a particular meaning, as 200 years ago a french poet did it. And you are claiming it is not possible

    Tell me, do you get angry with "Oral Literature" ? It means spoken-written words, you know, two diametrically opposed terms. Apparently, it is not possible. Could you be objective and not try to ignore history?

    We don't need to expand what poetry is.
    It is done all the time. We are far from the old definition of poetry and prose as the daily language and stylized metric language.

    The first fallacy in Baudelaire's "experiment" is that there's such a thing as "poetic language," and there's not. Poetry has been written in every language from the highest, most esoterically learned diction, rhetoric and form (eg, Milton) to the lowest, most commonly understood diction, rhetoric and form (eg, Burns). There is poetry that is allegorical and symbolic and highly metaphoric and poetry that says what it means with no recourse to metaphor. So it's a complete myth that there's such a thing as "poetic language," as almost every kind of writing that is found in poetry can be found/utilized in prose and was probably done so (somewhere) before Baudelaire.
    How you call a fallacy and then agree that all baudelaire proposal - which you call myth - that all kind of writing found in poems can be used in prose? Baudelaire knows and he claims to be doing an experimentation on prose. He is not Mallarmé, this one much more radical than him. Prose poems are exactly the evidence - not the first, but the main propaganda - that usual defintion of poetry as musical, metric, rythimical, etc is flawed since you can use it all in prose. he was helping, questioning (does not matter his own answer) exactly to make clear the distinctions. Poems have verses and are not just the use of poetic devices. He pretty much predates your homeboy Eaglaton by more than a century, but all he needed was to use the term "prose poem" and produce works from it.


    Now, what you CAN say is that there are some types of writing/style that are MORE COMMON in poetry than in prose, but these are connotations, associations, NOT the things that denote and define poetry to begin with. Baudelaire may use all the devices most commonly found in poetry and reject all of those most commonly found in prose, but, again, this makes for poetic prose, not actual poetry. So, no, Baudelaire proved no such thing.
    Dude, Poetic means relative of poetry or with poetry traits. Poetric prose literary means prose like poetry, so it is all the same. And yes, Baudelaire did prove he can use poetic devices in prose.

  5. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Way before I was born it was called poetry. There is several authors and critics that call it poetry. One of them, a critical authority as Baudelaire. You cannot dismiss him with a shrugging, objectively he is a major part of history. Ignoring him is a major mistake.
    It doesn’t matter who calls anything what. They called Pluto a planet before I was born; now they don’t. What they call it is all in how they define “planet,” but whatever you call it changes nothing about the actual object. That was my point about Baudelaire’s “prose poems,” calling them “poems” doesn’t make them any closer to other objects called “poems” than calling 4’33” “music” makes it any closer to other objects called “music.”

    I don’t think I’m “dismissing” or “shrugging off” Baudelaire, I just strongly disagree with his (or anyone’s) attempt to redefine things that don’t need redefining. One thing Baudelaire certainly wasn’t was an expert on cognitive linguistics, and being that that’s an area I’ve studied as well, I know how the human brain processes words and why artists are prone to “messing” with denotative limits. It’s all well and good that some artists can provoke us to really think about definitions and limits rather than blindly accepting them, but there comes a point where you can mess with a term so much and include so many objects that the term becomes absolutely useless as a means of fruitful communication.

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    That is an ontrageous and ridiculous lie. Several people do not consider "your definitions" true.
    I never said everyone agreed with my definitions, what I said was that most every dictionary, textbook, and authoritative reference (eg, Princeton) does. Princeton may be THE reference book for such terms, and let’s see what it says:

    POETRY

    I. Means and Ends. A poem is an instance of verbal art, a text set in verse, bound speech… Traditionally these have been taken as the ones offered by pros., i.e. verse form: lineation, meter, sound-pattering, syntactic deployment, and stanza forms… p. has traditionally been distinguished from prose by virtue of being set in verse. What most readers understand as p. was, up until 1850, set in lines which were metrical, and even the several forms of vers libre and free verse produced since 1850 have been built largely on one or another concept of the line. Lineation is therefore central to the traditional conception of p. Prose is cast in sentences; p. is cast in sentences cast into lines. Prose syntax has the shape of meaning, but poetic syntax is stretched across the frame of meter or the poem’s visual space, so that it has this shape as well as meaning. Whether the pros. of the poem is primarily aural, visual, or mixed it creates design. (p. 938-939)

    I could also cite Furniss/Bath’s textbook, and many others that mention “line” as the unifying element of all objects we call poetry.

    Besides, this is rather beside the point whether or not we can actually find any common link between all objects we call “poems/poetry” and then distinguish them from those we call “prose.”

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    This is a poem:

    We certainly cannot use line breaking here, so we cannot exactly, as we do not even know how it sounds, discern the metric and use "what is left" according to him. Yet, it is an Epic Poem.
    Ok, I’ll challenge you: how do we know it is an epic poem? What makes it epic and what makes it a poem?

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    We do not choose with objective qualities to fit to a defintion, like you are doing.
    Then what do we do?

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Do not insist with the Dickison thing. She just said a metaphor about what is poetry to her. Prose Poems are not such thing they are a textual style meaning a team with poetic devices without verses. They are not similar at all.
    Right, she expressed what poetry meant to her; Baudelaire took elements that constituted poetry FOR HIM, put them in prose, and called it a prose poem. You keep using the term “poetic devices” but what makes those devices strictly poetic and not, you know, prosaic?

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    not only you can use diametrically opposed terms to build an expression with a particular meaning, as 200 years ago a french poet did it. And you are claiming it is not possible
    IF we define poetry as “lineated literature” and prose as “non-lineated literature” then it is absolutely impossible to combine them at the same time, the same way something can’t be both alive and dead (barring Shrodinger’s Cat), or fat and thin, or tall and short, or whatever. Of course, that’s IF we define them that way; I’m arguing we should, you’re arguing that we shouldn’t. I would challenge that if you don’t, the distinction between them becomes impossible to delineate (no pun intended). Now, one might could combine lineated literature and non-lineated literature in a single work, and perhaps THEN you’d have a prose poem, but even then the prose and the poetry would be separate from each other within the work.

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Tell me, do you get angry with "Oral Literature" ? It means spoken-written words, you know, two diametrically opposed terms. Apparently, it is not possible. Could you be objective and not try to ignore history?
    LOL, what a terrible example! What’s written down are the “written” words, and what’s spoken are the “spoken” words. There’s nothing diametrically oppositional about them at all! To use a better example: you can pour water into a cup. You can take that same water and freeze it to make ice. That water can never be both water and ice at the same time. However, you could freeze that water, and pour another glass of different water, so you could have the same molecules in two different forms. The first example (same water both frozen/liquid) is what I mean about prose/poetry. The exact same text can’t exist in two diametrically opposed states (lineated VS non-lineated) simultaneously; what you’re talking about is the second example, having two different forms of the same general substance (frozen/liquid, spoken/written)

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    How you call a fallacy and then agree that all baudelaire proposal - which you call myth - that all kind of writing found in poems can be used in prose?
    What I’m calling a fallacy is the notion that those things that Baudelaire transposed from poetry to prose were what made the poetry poetry in the first place.

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Poems have verses and are not just the use of poetic devices. He pretty much predates your homeboy Eaglaton by more than a century, but all he needed was to use the term "prose poem" and produce works from it.
    Well, if you agree Baudelaire agrees with Eagleton about poetry being founded on the notion of “verse,” then what are we arguing about?! All I’m saying is that Baudelaire’s “prose poems” weren’t actual poems.

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Dude, Poetic means relative of poetry or with poetry traits. Poetric prose literary means prose like poetry, so it is all the same.
    Poetic means things associated with poetry, not things that denote/define poetry; THAT’S where the difference lies. It’s like saying that there’s the act of sex, and then there are “sexy” things that we associate with the act of sex, but which are not the act itself. That’s the difference I’ve been talking about all along. That you can have “sexy” things outside of sex doesn’t make those sexy things sex; that you can have “poetic” things outside of poetry doesn’t make those poetic things poetry. Associations, connotations, intensions, etc. ARE NOT denotative definitions.
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  6. #36
    Quote Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman View Post
    I think you're confused: Eagleton's definition dealt only with the difference between poetry and prose, not poetry and verse or prose and verse. Verse traditionally WAS metrical poetry, and I see no reason to change its meaning now.

    Why does it not differentiate it from other forms of language? Even if we're dealing with pre-written, verbal poetry, the meter essentially determined where "lines" ended. It was a type of formal arrangement. EG, in Homer the Dactylic Hexameter line almost always ended with a dactyl/spondee combination on the final two feet to "signal" the end of the line. Rhyme and other devices can help signal the same thing in other forms of verbal poetry. So even there you have a means by which the author is determining where the lines in by their usage of formal signals.

    It might also be useful to read through Yudkowsky's "A Human's Guide to Words" and, more specifically, this entry where "art" can be substituted for "poetry". It's the same argument, though.

    If Red Wheelbarrow was written as prose it would not be "good poetry" or poetry at all. It might be "poetic," but not "poetry." One problem with reading free verse is that there really IS no way of distinguishing it from prose, unless one pauses significantly at the end of lines (which is my method).
    I think you're confused: Eagleton's definition dealt only with the difference between poetry and prose, not poetry and verse or prose and verse. Verse traditionally WAS metrical poetry, and I see no reason to change its meaning now.

    I'm not in the least confused. Eagleton (as represented in this thread...I've yet to read the original) says that the difference between poetry and prose is in the lineation (arbitrary/authorially chosen in poetry). "Verse" (from Latin) refers to "turning," i.e., the line breaks of written poetry. In this sense, "a verse" is a line of poetry. Of course some folks use "verse" more loosely to refer to "a poem" or "poetry" in general. My previous comments were based on what you've said about Eagleton's definitions. Verse may well have traditionally meant metrical poetry, but that is not what we are talking about, and Eagleton's definition clearly involves any sort of writing that is parsed into lines ("verse'") by a "poet," who by such orthography distinguishes the writing as "poetry" as opposed to "prose." I'm not sure that Eagleton meant this orthography to define "poetry" or just "verse." His definition certainly makes sense as a technical definition of "verse." "Poetry" is a more tricky thing to define technically. There are many definitions of "poetry" that seek to distinguish it from "other" forms of language.

    We could define poetry as "verse," including verse with some sort of metrical (accentual. syllabic, or accentual/syllabic) regularity, or verse that is "free" of such regularity. Metrical regularity is defined as a recognizable rhythmical pattern. Traditionally, meter involves the counting of word accents and syllables in a poetic line, and in accentual/syllabic verse this involves the notion of "feet." These feet derive from classical meters. You can Google "poetic meter" to find good on-line discussions of these metrical units. Most of them are two and three syllable metrical units (iambs, trochees, dactyls, anapests, spondees, etc. There are also larger metrical units (found in Greek poetry), such as the coriamb.

    Why does it not differentiate it from other forms of language? Even if we're dealing with pre-written, verbal poetry, the meter essentially determined where "lines" ended. It was a type of formal arrangement. EG, in Homer the Dactylic Hexameter line almost always ended with a dactyl/spondee combination on the final two feet to "signal" the end of the line. Rhyme and other devices can help signal the same thing in other forms of verbal poetry. So even there you have a means by which the author is determining where the lines in by their usage of formal signals.

    No argument. But you are talking about metrical verse, not "free verse." Greek meters are complex (much more so than Latin or later English meters), with longer (4 and more syllables long) "feet."

    "Free verse" is free of any such regularity. One could argue that it depends on the "rhythm of the entire line" rather than upon lesser metrical units.

    JCamilo makes a good point: You certainly do not define verse or free verse to then define poetry, it is certainly the other way around. If it isn't poetry in first place, you do not even need to talk about verses. Verse is a line in the poem. Free verse is when a poem verses do not keep a metrical pattern.

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    Quote Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman View Post
    It doesn’t matter who calls anything what. They called Pluto a planet before I was born; now they don’t. What they call it is all in how they define “planet,” but whatever you call it changes nothing about the actual object. That was my point about Baudelaire’s “prose poems,” calling them “poems” doesn’t make them any closer to other objects called “poems” than calling 4’33” “music” makes it any closer to other objects called “music.”

    I don’t think I’m “dismissing” or “shrugging off” Baudelaire, I just strongly disagree with his (or anyone’s) attempt to redefine things that don’t need redefining.
    Funny how you just wrote the Pluto and planet history where people attepted to redefine something and when it is baudelaire or anything shattering your definition of poetry.


    One thing Baudelaire certainly wasn’t was an expert on cognitive linguistics, and being that that’s an area I’ve studied as well, I know how the human brain processes words and why artists are prone to “messing” with denotative limits. It’s all well and good that some artists can provoke us to really think about definitions and limits rather than blindly accepting them, but there comes a point where you can mess with a term so much and include so many objects that the term becomes absolutely useless as a means of fruitful communication.
    Newsflash: the term Prose Poem is stabilished for 200 years. It is a bit too late for you to rebel against it. By now, the vast majority of literary students can communicate pretty well with each other using it. So, your claim that "a mess with a term" is null. Come back, stopping dismissing it and deal with.

    I never said everyone agreed with my definitions, what I said was that most every dictionary, textbook, and authoritative reference (eg, Princeton) does. Princeton may be THE reference book for such terms, and let’s see what it says:
    You said almost every single, which is obviously ridiculous. And you can throw a list of your references here and it will not deny the list of people who defined poetry differently... but lets deal with Princeton.

    POETRY

    I. Means and Ends. A poem is an instance of verbal art, a text set in verse, bound speech… Traditionally these have been taken as the ones offered by pros., i.e. verse form: lineation, meter, sound-pattering, syntactic deployment, and stanza forms… p. has traditionally been distinguished from prose by virtue of being set in verse. What most readers understand as p. was, up until 1850, set in lines which were metrical, and even the several forms of vers libre and free verse produced since 1850 have been built largely on one or another concept of the line. Lineation is therefore central to the traditional conception of p. Prose is cast in sentences; p. is cast in sentences cast into lines. Prose syntax has the shape of meaning, but poetic syntax is stretched across the frame of meter or the poem’s visual space, so that it has this shape as well as meaning. Whether the pros. of the poem is primarily aural, visual, or mixed it creates design. (p. 938-939)

    I could also cite Furniss/Bath’s textbook, and many others that mention “line” as the unifying element of all objects we call poetry.
    Yes, they define poem and are careful to say it is a "traditional" view. They even mention the view that poetry was view until the middle of XIX century. But the most notable thing is what they say in the whole book. (they are talking about two different approaches on metric and prosody).

    "It was reportedly Jeremy Bentham who said that he knew poetry when he saw it: the words did not run all the way to the right-hand side of the page. But this seems a little confused: surely Bentham was not talking about poetry but rather verse. Verseform is the mode of presentation of lang. which segments speech into lines, which on the printed page do not fill all the space to the right, or in recitation are marked at their ends for aural recognition (see LINE). Poetry, most of us would say, is something else, something less definite. Poetry is memorable..." (pg.1024)....

    So, The give , sorry, THE given book actually proposes that Poetry is something else. As I said, the distinction between prose and poetry is quite more complex than you are pretending it to be. To deal with this complexity, they add after listing a handful of poetry defintions which do not deal with verses:

    "We have, then, not two terms, poetry and prose, but three—poetry, prose, and verse." (and of course, Poem is what they defined by the use of verse. So in the end they are pretty close to say we have 3 things, poetry, prose and poems, just like I said). But one can claim they still think Poetry must have verses. Oh, but no. They do claim otherwise.

    "It is possible there could be poetry not set in lines., if one defines poetry in terms of content or compression of content; and certainly there are hybrid forms such as rhythmical prose (see PROSE RHYTHM) and the prose poem (q.v.)." pg.737

    Lines here more or less like verses (they work with verses being metrical, not just lines however), They do acknowledge other forms to define poetry (hence why they as encyclopedia do not end the definition in poetry in a few lines), suggest there will be poetry without the line break and of course, consider prose -poetry as a hybrid, you know, something that unify both things and not negate each other. They go on, mentioning they are working with those unities because of their importance and because the majority (not all) poetry takes advantage of the verse organization.

    They do not stop of course. They know it is not as simple and add:

    "Essentialists—"affectivists" might be a better term—do not consider verseform essential to the definition of poetry and view poets as more and sometimes other than versifiers. For centuries, from Quintilian (Istc. A.D.) to romanticism, it was a critical commonplace that Lucan was a rhetorician or historian who wrote in v. and that Plato, Xenophon (Cyropaedia), and Heliodorus (Ethiopian History) were poets. The major Western proponents of this view incl. Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Horace, Sidney, Wordsworth, Shelley, Arnold, and Croce."... pg, 1390.

    Oops, so they even add there is an entire critical group that oppose to the definition? Of course, THE encyclopedia cannot ignore their object. One page before, when they mention the confusion that it is all this therminology, they mention

    "We must first recognize that the two modes, verses.and prose., intersect the concept "poetry" and its opposite, nonpoetry.". They certainly think you cannot dismiss prose so easily while defining poetry. And that it is not just verse use, rather one of the concepts in the definition. Of course, the new edition of the ecyclopedia changed a bit the definition, ending with the claim that the very defnition of poetry is not stable and there always someone denying an poetic form in a culture. Exactly what you do. (They aslo say Zulu poetry does not have verse, so they again, do not seems to be limited to your definition).

    So, can we move on with the idea that Princenton just agrees with you?


    Besides, this is rather beside the point whether or not we can actually find any common link between all objects we call “poems/poetry” and then distinguish them from those we call “prose.”
    Well, maybe besides for us, but for the topic starter, that was the point, recall?

    Ok, I’ll challenge you: how do we know it is an epic poem? What makes it epic and what makes it a poem?
    Sorry, you do not challenge me as I do not need to present anything except contest the previous Eagleton defintion. It's (not the only example) poetry. How the definition that is minimalist can ignore this poem? It cann't.


    Right, she expressed what poetry meant to her; Baudelaire took elements that constituted poetry FOR HIM, put them in prose, and called it a prose poem. You keep using the term “poetic devices” but what makes those devices strictly poetic and not, you know, prosaic?
    Baudelaire did no such thing. He opted for an already existing form, so he could stretch the boundaires of prose with poetry. Nothing of "definition what is poetry". Those devices are usually related to poetry due to tradition, that is all.

    IF we define poetry as “lineated literature” and prose as “non-lineated literature” then it is absolutely impossible to combine them at the same time, the same way something can’t be both alive and dead (barring Shrodinger’s Cat), or fat and thin, or tall and short, or whatever. Of course, that’s IF we define them that way; I’m arguing we should, you’re arguing that we shouldn’t. I would challenge that if you don’t, the distinction between them becomes impossible to delineate (no pun intended). Now, one might could combine lineated literature and non-lineated literature in a single work, and perhaps THEN you’d have a prose poem, but even then the prose and the poetry would be separate from each other within the work.
    Of course, people already combined it. Basho for example. But the problem is: a definition that is not satisfactory must be challenged.

    LOL, what a terrible example! What’s written down are the “written” words, and what’s spoken are the “spoken” words. There’s nothing diametrically oppositional about them at all!
    you must be joking, tell me you are joking. Oral Literature does not deal with any written word, or you are unaware of this? Oral Literature is a famous oxymoron, something quite discussed among oral literature students. Because you know, Oral Word and Writen word are exactly two oposites that do not exist together at all.

    To use a better example: you can pour water into a cup. You can take that same water and freeze it to make ice. That water can never be both water and ice at the same time. However, you could freeze that water, and pour another glass of different water, so you could have the same molecules in two different forms. The first example (same water both frozen/liquid) is what I mean about prose/poetry. The exact same text can’t exist in two diametrically opposed states (lineated VS non-lineated) simultaneously; what you’re talking about is the second example, having two different forms of the same general substance (frozen/liquid, spoken/written)
    Verse, not verse. Two forms.

    See your both Eaglaton put a Lawrence poem in the freezer and removes, changing it from Ice (verse) to water (prose).

    What I’m calling a fallacy is the notion that those things that Baudelaire transposed from poetry to prose were what made the poetry poetry in the first place.
    Good for him.

    Well, if you agree Baudelaire agrees with Eagleton about poetry being founded on the notion of “verse,” then what are we arguing about?! All I’m saying is that Baudelaire’s “prose poems” weren’t actual poems.
    You, I dunno. You went to argue and then we certainly advanced over the theme. Go and check my first post on this thread.

    Poetic means things associated with poetry, not things that denote/define poetry; THAT’S where the difference lies. It’s like saying that there’s the act of sex, and then there are “sexy” things that we associate with the act of sex, but which are not the act itself. That’s the difference I’ve been talking about all along. That you can have “sexy” things outside of sex doesn’t make those sexy things sex; that you can have “poetic” things outside of poetry doesn’t make those poetic things poetry. Associations, connotations, intensions, etc. ARE NOT denotative definitions.
    The word is sexual, not sexy. Sexy is more close to sensuality than sexuality. And Poetic means things related to poetry and with the traits of poetry (so if you say this text is poetic is because it has poetry traits, this prose is poetic, it is because it has poetry traits) and you know, what define us right? Our traits.

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    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Funny how you just wrote the Pluto and planet history where people attepted to redefine something and when it is baudelaire or anything shattering your definition of poetry.
    I don’t think you got my point. People calling Pluto “not a planet” DID NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT PLUTO. All it did was change how our cognitive linguistic map was wired. Similarly, calling Baudelaire’s work “prose poems” DOES NOT MAKE IT ANY CLOSER TO FARTHER TO OTHER OBJECTS WE CALL POETRY. All it did was change (for some) how their cognitive linguistic map was wired.

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Newsflash: the term Prose Poem is stabilished for 200 years. It is a bit too late for you to rebel against it.
    I’m far from the only person in those two hundred years to claim that the term is an oxymoron and shouldn’t exist.

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Yes, they define poem and are careful to say it is a "traditional" view. They even mention the view that poetry was view until the middle of XIX century. But the most notable thing is what they say in the whole book….
    It was the view up until the middle of the 19th century and still is for the vast majority of poetry readers, and I contend there’s absolutely no good reason to change it. I’m well aware Princeton writes a great deal more on the subject, but even if you take what they wrote: “Poetry, most of us would say, is something else, something less definite…” well, the entire point of having definitions is to be, well, definitive! Speaking of yet another oxymoron, you can’t (or, at least, shouldn’t) have an “indefinite definition,” especially when you can have one that IS definite and actually has some practical application.

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    the distinction between prose and poetry is quite more complex than you are pretending it to be. To deal with this complexity, they add after listing a handful of poetry defintions which do not deal with verses:
    No, the distinction is made complex by people that have a distaste for such definitiveness and prefer connotations to denotations. Like I said, we have definitions that work perfectly well if people were content with leaving them alone, but poets love to screw with language, hence the fact that they’ve refused to leave it alone. But take this:

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    "It is possible there could be poetry not set in lines., if one defines poetry in terms of content or compression of content; and certainly there are hybrid forms such as rhythmical prose (see PROSE RHYTHM) and the prose poem (q.v.)." pg.737
    Yes, it it POSSIBLE to have poetry not set in lines, IF one defines poetry in terms of something else besides form. What I’ve been arguing is that we SHOULDN’T DO THIS. Further, I’ve argued WHY we shouldn’t do this. Two major reasons:

    1. We have two definitions that ARE definitive, work extremely well, and actually rely on something that’s objective about the text that allows us to clearly demarcate one from the other because they are simultaneously incompatible.

    2. If we choose to redefine them it will be at the expense of 1. and for the benefit of other things that are NOT mutually exclusive (at best) and, at worst, are entirely subjective.

    Why in the world would you want to “redefine” something by trading the former for the latter?

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Oops, so they even add there is an entire critical group that oppose to the definition?
    But who cares? I never denied such a thing. However, are you really denying that verse = poetry is still the majority view and the definition that most clearly separates prose from poetry?

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Of course, the new edition of the ecyclopedia changed a bit the definition, ending with the claim that the very defnition of poetry is not stable and there always someone denying an poetic form in a culture. Exactly what you do.
    What I’M doing is trying to keep language as clear as possible so mutual communication is fruitful. Miscommunication happens when you have two people running around with completely different intensions of the same word in their head, and many, many, many debates could be avoided if people were more concerned with connecting their intensions with extensional qualities. Lineation is an extensional quality that is easily recognized and understood. So it makes sense to me to have a word that refers to lineated literature (poetry) and a word that refers to non-lineated literature (prose), because the consequence not using those words to refer to those qualities is that you end up with a jumble of intensions that are applicable to both lineated and non-lineated literature, so that when someone says “poetry” or someone says “prose,” NOBODY WOULD HAVE A F’ING CLUE WHAT QUALITY SOMEONE WAS USING TO DEFINE THE WORD.

    Consider this: if we both share my definition of poetry, when I say “poetry” you know exactly what I mean and, what’s more important, what I DON’T mean. On the other hand, let’s ignore my definition and say I use the same word: what the hell do I mean now when I use the word and, what’s more, can you point to anything in the text that will distinguish it from any other kind of writing objectively?

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    So, can we move on with the idea that Princenton just agrees with you?
    Being an encyclopedia of course they’re going to include other “definitions” of poetry, but they open their entire section on “poetry” with the passage I transcribed FOR A DAMN GOOD REASON. However, we can forget about what sources agree/disagree with me and just focus on the issue of whether or not it’s wise to attempt to redefine either term.

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Sorry, you do not challenge me as I do not need to present anything except contest the previous Eagleton defintion.
    If you’re going to challenge definitions yet offer none of your own, essentially just leaving things with terms meaning anything, then what the hell’s the point? Do you really think I think that Eagleton’s definition is the ONLY definition out there? Do you really think I hadn’t read that entire Princeton section (and others)? Of course not; my point from the beginning was that Eagleton offered the best definition for all the reasons I’ve been giving. Now, if you think it’s NOT the best definition, it’s not enough just to point out that there are others, since that’s trivial; you have to point to others and argue why they’re better. Similarly, if you’re going to keep using terms like “epic poetry” while not choosing a definition, then you should be prepared to be challenged on just what the hell you mean by calling something “epic poetry” when you haven’t bothered to define either term; otherwise you’re just begging the question.

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    a definition that is not satisfactory must be challenged.
    Right, but there’s nothing unsatisfactory about Eagleton’s/my definition of poetry other than that people want to call other forms of literature poetry on a capricious whim.

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    you must be joking, tell me you are joking. Oral Literature does not deal with any written word, or you are unaware of this?
    No joke, I think we just misunderstood each other: I thought you were referring to oral literature that was written down as well. Still, there’s nothing oxymoronic about the term. If literature deals with written words, oral literature deals with spoken words; the same way verse can deal with metrical lines and free verse deals with un-metrical lines.

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Verse, not verse. Two forms.

    See your both Eaglaton put a Lawrence poem in the freezer and removes, changing it from Ice (verse) to water (prose).
    Or poetry and prose, two forms; and verse/free verse, two forms of poetry.

    I don’t know what you’re suggesting with the latter. The equivalent of “freezing” a “water” poem to make it prose would be like writing out Red Wheelbarrow in sentences without lines. It can’t exist both ways unless you write it out twice each way (like having two glasses of water).

    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    The word is sexual, not sexy. Sexy is more close to sensuality than sexuality. And Poetic means things related to poetry and with the traits of poetry (so if you say this text is poetic is because it has poetry traits, this prose is poetic, it is because it has poetry traits) and you know, what define us right? Our traits.
    Sexual, sexy, it doesn’t really matter to the point I was making. If you can have “sexual” things outside of sex, those things are clearly not what defines sex; if you can have “poetic” things outside of poetry, those things are clearly not what defines poetry. All it means is that there are qualities that are associated with something but that can exist outside that something without defining what that something is. Yes, traits “define” things, but some traits are required for that definitions and some are not. The color white might be a trait of a rose, but it is not what defines it as a rose since roses can come in multiple colors.
    "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung

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    Quote Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli View Post
    I'm not sure that Eagleton meant this orthography to define "poetry" or just "verse." His definition certainly makes sense as a technical definition of "verse." "Poetry" is a more tricky thing to define technically. There are many definitions of "poetry" that seek to distinguish it from "other" forms of language.
    Ok, I understand what you mean: Eagleton clearly meant this orthography to define poetry and not just verse. Or, perhaps more technically, if we were only to refer to verse as "the line," poetry could be the entire lineated work. As I've been debating JCamilo about, if you choose to (re)define poetry to mean anything else, then you are moving into realms where it would be impossible to distinguish it from any other writing on any objective level. As I said in my previous post, I'm aware there are other definitions of poetry out there, but, as JCamilo has been giving examples of (Baudelaire), those things are clearly not limited to "verse," and why would we want to refer to qualities that are not limited to what format they're written in when we can use those words to refer to the form itself?

    Quote Originally Posted by Nick Capozzoli View Post
    JCamilo makes a good point: You certainly do not define verse or free verse to then define poetry, it is certainly the other way around. If it isn't poetry in first place, you do not even need to talk about verses. Verse is a line in the poem. Free verse is when a poem verses do not keep a metrical pattern.
    I don't see why that's a good point since it's just a chicken and the egg game. If it was poetry without being in verse then what made it such, and how would we know since it WAS written (or spoken) in verse to begin with?
    "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung

    "To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." --Neil Gaiman; The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists

    "I'm on my way, from misery to happiness today. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" --The Proclaimers

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    Now that yours fooly's eyes are glazing over, let me put it this way:

    Imagine a round of "Final Jeopardy" in which the category is "Literature Forms." Write the "answer" appearing on the screen while the Jeopardy! theme plays for 30 seconds, until the winning contestant holds up the little blackboard containing the winning "question":

    "What is free verse?"

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    Quote Originally Posted by AuntShecky View Post
    Imagine a round of "Final Jeopardy" in which the category is "Literature Forms." Write the "answer" appearing on the screen while the Jeopardy! theme plays for 30 seconds, until the winning contestant holds up the little blackboard containing the winning "question":

    "What is free verse?"
    This literary form is defined as 'non-metrical verse.'

    Good luck, contestants. (Hard to write an actual Jeopardy-sounding "answer," since the "question" would be so obvious. A writer would probably have to get creative to make it a bit tougher. Something like: "This literary form might be thought of as emancipated turns.")
    "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung

    "To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." --Neil Gaiman; The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists

    "I'm on my way, from misery to happiness today. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" --The Proclaimers

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    Yes, Auntie, I was waiting to give you room since the discussion would side track you. (A mod may want to break the thread, it would be ok).

    If you are having such doubts, you certainly have a work that caused such doubt on you, right? Why don't you post here. Sometimes experience is a better guide than didatism. For example, try to see which metre was in a given line. None? Any? Why you broke the line like this? Why you choose such word order. If we find all those answers and they indicate an metric, irregular or not, a preference for rythim, a nuance on the effect of the line caused by such order or break, we may have a free verse.

    Otherwise - without vallue judgement - you may have prose.

    Can you make a defintion that will give you peace? Nope, several poems were written without line breakers, people is completely unware of this. Technically knowing it is fine, but even before someone coined 'free verse" and used it as a flag for their poetics. So, it is another near oxymoric defintion there will be always grey areas, therefore just rest us to read your poems.

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    Quote Originally Posted by JCamilo View Post
    Yes, Auntie, I was waiting to give you room since the discussion would side track you. (A mod may want to break the thread, it would be ok).
    Thank you, J.

    If and when we can come up with a workable definition of free verse upon which the consensus would more or less agree, optimally it could be applied universally --to the works of both "real" modern poets and poetasters such as yours fooly.

    The "poem," or whatever it should be called, is #462 in the thread, appearing here.

    An astute LitNutter whose opinions I thoroughly respect characterized it as "prose" in response #464. I wasn't at all "hurt" by his observation, despite the fact that I'd worked on the darn thing for a full three weeks ,and it hadn't been something that I'd "dashed off" in a matter of minutes.

    I've been a LitNutter for over six years, and in that time I've noticed that the majority of contributions on the "Personal Poetry" forum by other LitNutters have been non-traditional, non-metered, unrhymed verse. A very small number of responses to these poems criticize them for being "prose."

    But I really wanted to know what exactly constitutes "free verse," and how it differs from "prose," which ,when one is attempting to write "poetry," sounds pedestrian and mundane.
    Last edited by AuntShecky; 08-15-2013 at 07:32 PM.

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    I see your edit Aunty and remove my link.

    Interesting thread that has *piqued my curiosity as well.

    Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
    tailor STATELY
    Last edited by tailor STATELY; 08-15-2013 at 07:19 PM. Reason: remove redundant link / *peaked (groan)
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    My opinion, It is free verse. Not saying there is not the "Prose feeling" mentioned, but free verse do and can have prose feelings. But the line breaking seems to impose a edgy, fragmented reading which i did not found when i put the poem in prose, without breaks (to have a similar effect in prose i think you would need other words, other order, etc). It make the poem eletric, like buzzing. There is no regular metric obviously, but seems to impose a rythim. If that was your aim better for me

    Anyways, i think it is a poem because the versing (free) is targetting for an effect not attainable in prose, not a casual line breaker.

    Edit: another thing that seems to bring some strangeness is that made me think a bit of portuguese poetry (modern portuguese poetry of course), not the short english words, but long words that are used more often in portuguese.

    About the definition, the difficulty is exactly that free verse approaches to prose, as until XIX century there was the convention that poetry used metrics. Technically, a very good free verse poet will can easily make prose and free verse be so alike and good that the only difference be seen in printing process. I guess the question it is free verse if the use of line breaks without the metre causes an effect not attained in prose and that maybe the only way to find the difference.
    Last edited by JCamilo; 08-15-2013 at 08:18 PM.

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