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Showing posts from September, 2006

sandman

What a creepy series of comics these do be. (Or graphic novels, whatever you prefer) I think that Neil Gaiman has a very twisted mind. But intriguing at the same time. I mean, he writes some good stories, particularly in comic book form. I think most of his novels seem a little unfinished somehow when you read them. Or the ones I've read anyway. There are some really great ideas though. 'Neverwhere' had a great premise, for example, based in a subterranean world below London, half real but mostly fantastical, populated by the disspossed and the forgotten of the past, present and myth. But I felt dissatisfied with it in the end. Ultimately it didn't feel whole, as though he'd left bits out, and I don't know how well he communicated the setting. As for the story, it was confusing, and I don't remember it all that well now, which must tell you something, right? I only read it at the end of last year. Not that my memory for details is very good... but my point i...

on verse

I had alot of time to kill on the bus trip back from Canberra, and so I was reading through my English textbook (The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th edition, so not too bad at all)for about three hours. This is just so that you understand the cotext in which I came up with the idea for this post. Why do people always associate poetry with rhyme? It doesn't have to be the case. And I think that most people would know that alot of poetry doens't rhyme, or is at least not in rhyming couplets. This is not even a new idea. It's not just these new-fangled poets who dispense with tradition and so rhyme. Old English poetry doesn't rhyme, it alliterates instead. Shakespeare often wrote in blank verse which means NO RHYMING. Robert Browning doesn't always write in rhyme. In short, poetry doesn't necessarily equal rhyme even before the 21st century. Now, I have to confess that I am a bit biased in this as I always thought that rhyming couplets tend to sound silly. And abab...