Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 1. Poetry and its Creation
Section 3. Poetic Technique
English Poetic Forms

Poem and Song [2]

No, a song need not have a less intricate metre than a poem; and if it appears usually more simple in its rhythmical turns, yet in that apparent simplicity a considerable, though very delicate subtlety is possible. A certain liquidity of sound is essential, but so long as you keep that, you can play variations to a great extent. I don’t think an identical regularity or unbroken recurrence is imperative — though equivalence of sound values may be. It is a matter of the inner ear and its guidance rather than of any exact external measurements — especially in the English language, which is too free and plastic for the theories which are sometimes imposed upon its movements. The theories don’t matter much, because the language contrives to go its own way even while pretending to conform to the theories. I don’t know what models to propose to you — old style English practice was too regular for the freer spirit of the modern lyric and my reading in contemporary poetry has been too fragmentary and unsystematic for me to remember the right models, though they must be there.

17 December 1931