Word: iambics
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...difficult to figure out why the Advocate is publishing this anthology. Does the magazine want to show off the best pieces it has published? Does it want to demonstrate how four generations of Harvard undergraduates took to literary experimentation? Does it want to present curiosities, like Wallace Stevens' writing iambic tetrameter or Henry Miller's early prurient scatology...
Actually, it is something between prose and poetry that Nabokov has used-he has retained Pushkin's iambic tetrameter-and the result is a recognizable and respectable cousinship. To a Russian raised on the original poem, Nabokov's version naturally lacks the music, but retains much of the rhythm, and at least does not (as do the often jingly previous translations) mock Pushkin's music by the clumsiness of its imitation. The sense is as nearly exact as translation permits...
...said Kaufman, fell within the traditional "fair use" rule. It could hardly be considered unfair that the Mad versions were cast in the same meter as the original lyrics: "We doubt that even so eminent a composer as Irving Berlin should be permitted to claim a property interest in iambic pentameter...
Eliot relentlessly sees to it that, after years of bachelor living, Eliot is properly fed. Friends crack that he rhythmically carves a roast "in iambic pentameter-five stresses to each slice...
...meaning (a) With jellies smoother than the creamy curd, b) When I consider how my light is spent, c) When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw), a student must show a high degree of literary perception. Each line has ten syllables, and each is in iambic pentameter. But only b makes little attempt to convey meaning through the sound of the words used...