The Voice of the Sea, by Suzette Richards – image generated.
The earlier philosophers had all written their scientific and other theses in the form of poems. These were unrhymed—this poetic device only came about much later. Some poets had left us a legacy of prophecy. I find poetry a great vehicle to express my thoughts, often allowing me to voice an opinion in a manner that might be palatable to an audience, mimicking the practice of the ancient philosophers.
In 2012, when I started to pen a few crude haiku in honour of a good friend, I came to the realisation that many of the haiku written by Basho actually included philosophical statements—little gems of human psyche contained in reference to nature. But I wished to say more; much more. I set out to investigate and even to study in depth literally hundreds of poetic forms. The idea of the design of Suzette Prime germinated and grew into an epiphany. Fusing my two passions of mathematics and philosophy, ‘The Fish Eagle’ was the first Suzette Prime poem I penned, breaking my own rule of ‘no punctuation’ by including the dash. The capitalisation of the words in the title is per the standard international format, as I do not view the rule about ‘no capitalisation’ to extend to the title of the poem—the jury is still out on that one. On the subject of capitalisation of the words (or not): the American poet, e.e. cummings, was way ahead of me.
The Fish Eagle
master of the river calling to his mate
I lift my face to the early morning sun
just in time to see him swoop
extending talons
scooping fish
bearing it aloft
he settles
on an overhanging branch
and savours his catch of the morning – ripping
all’s well with the world – the fish eagle and I
As some of you may know, I am not a great fan of syllable counts—the main reason being that I am mildly dyslexic and having spelt phonetically all my life makes it difficult for me to express myself in some of the poetic forms where syllable count and even metre are important. I tackled the problem (as I do most things in life) by facing the challenge head-on. However, metrical verse remains my Achilles Heel. I live in a country with 11 official languages, and as a result, one’s ear becomes attuned to cadence, more so than the actual meaning of the words. Many African languages have a natural lyrical quality not found in Western languages, and their vocabulary is rich in onomatopoeia, for example, the isiZulu word ‘iloliwe’ (meaning ‘train’) reminds us of the sound of the wheels on a train track.
The academic reasoning behind scansion: Scansion is the method or practice of determining and graphically representing the metrical pattern of a line or verse—dividing it into metrical feet. The Iambic-Trochaic Law, first described by Thaddeus Bolton in 1894, is when every other sound is loud we tend to hear groups of two sounds with an initial beat. When every other sound is long, we hear groups of two sounds with a final beat. In a 2021 paper Professor Michael Wagner, from McGill University, Canada, shows that the rhythm we perceive is due to the two-dimensional parsing of the acoustic stream. In other words: it is not how we speak, but how we hear. This in effect renders metrical verse redundant!
As mentioned above, not all language groups speak like an audition for a Shakespearian play. When poetry is read out loud in an affectatious manner by stressing every second syllable (the basic iambic metre), it jars on the ears of the listeners. I am not alone in this. Imagism was favoured by a small band of poets during a short period of time at the turn of the 20th century. It is characterised by fragmented narratives and introspection in a free form, focusing on a concrete subject, juxtaposed with an intellectualised response to this, rejecting the florid language inherent in the preceding poetic movements of the Romanticism and Victorian poetry periods.
Another important development that influenced my design of Suzette Prime is the open form. Although open form (formerly known as free verse) became a dominant poetic mode only in the 20th century, it has its roots in 17th century England. John Milton (1608–1674), who became blind at the age of 43, was considered by TS Eliot (1888–1965) to be the greatest writer of this form of poetry in English.
The narrative technique, stream of consciousness, was another influence on my poetry. In it the raw material of the narrator’s unguarded thoughts and immediate feelings regarding an incident are presented unedited and seemingly near-unintelligible. The term was first introduced by William James in his Principles of Psychology (1890). PS: Psychology was originally a branch of philosophy.
In December 2012, I hosted a contest on the poetry website PoetrySoup, and invited poets to write poetry using the new Suzette Prime poetry form that I had designed during October of that year. It coincided with PoetrySoup listing Suzette Prime as a new poetic form. My Suzette Prime poem, Time, lent its name to the self-published anthology, © Time—Suzette Prime Poetry 2014. It included poems by nine international poets—all winners in that very first Suzette Prime contest held.
In April 2013 I completed the Introduction to Philosophy course through Edinburgh University. My main objective was to get a basic groundwork established whereby I could enhance the philosophical aspect of my Suzette Prime poetry. I find it interesting without being swayed by any particular school of thought.
Suzette Prime is not solely driven by syllable counts. There is much more to it than meets the eye. It is just handy shorthand to state that the line breaks replace the function of punctuation. They are more often than not stress arcs, the rhythm of each individual phrase is isochronic (coming at regular, brief intervals). These written representations of natural speech patterns are to be found in the Tetractys, where the designer of this poetic form, Ray Stebbing, who saw it as the English answer to haiku, urged us that the rhythm of the first four phrases should be meaningful phrases. Also, William Carlos Williams tried to find an answer to the struggle of the open form/free verse which he felt lacked some element of structure. He introduced the ‘variable foot’, a metrical device to resolve the conflict between form and freedom of verse. The lines are syllabic but not uniform in metre, as they are more commonly defined as having a single arc (a phrase that encapsulates a core element) per line. As an illustration, from his poem: Asphodel, that Greeny [sic] Flower, 1955:
I have learned much in my life
from books
and out of them
about love.
The thoughts (more than the pronunciation of words—which might vary from country to country, region to region, etc) are often isolated and, therefore, made more prominent. Rhyme and metre are eschewed. The design of Suzette Prime is merely the framework to hang the philosophical inquiry on.
This past year I have been focusing on metaphorical realism and had endeavoured to include it in my poems. As with other artistic movements that shaped poetry throughout the ages, metaphorical realism influenced poetry, notably in Russia where it has its roots. Suzette Prime, which requires a philosophical statement, is the ideal vehicle to address this genre, i.e., the argument as to what constitutes reality. Poetry groups and movements or schools may be self-identified by the poets that form them or defined by critics who see unifying characteristics of a body of work by more than one poet. To be a school a group of poets must share a common style or a common ethos. A commonality of form is not in itself sufficient to define a school, therefore, only writing poetry in Suzette Prime would not render it a new poetry movement. The term metaphorical realism appropriately suggests both the undermining of literal realism and the elevation of metaphor. ‘The element of unexpectedness will shake up the viewer [reader] and awaken his artistic nature.’ ~Vladimir Kush – considered the father of Metaphorical Realism art.
ALONE
the Milky Way that rises like a sea fret
forging a way amongst the infinite stars
draws inspiration from the souls gone before
alone
I’m my own master
to thy
I will soon return
refreshed
Suzette Prime poetry has been shared and highlighted in blogs worldwide, many of the poems translated (with my written permission). Suzette Prime was mentioned in the SA publication © The Really Useful Maths book: A guide to interactive teaching, by Tony Brown, Henry Liebling 2014.
© SUZETTE PRIME 2012—Revised October 2023
The design of this Syllabic Verse
A syllabic verse means it does not contain rhyme or metre.
Prime number syllables count: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 … 23; PLUS a philosophical statement.
No formal stanzas and any combination of a prime number syllable count may be used per line. You may vary the line lengths (no set sequence is required) to create a pleasing cadence or to stress certain points. No punctuation as the line breaks serve this function and no capital letters are used, except in the case where it is grammatically required, e.g., proper nouns and the pronoun ‘I’. It is presented flush left on the page. Any topic that lends itself to a personal philosophical statement, or includes one of the philosophical inquiries, is suitable for Suzette Prime.
Definitions
A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself.
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. It is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument and thought; it doesn’t rely on empirical facts. Reality is one of the fundamental inquiries of philosophy; therefore, the concept of metaphorical realism is included in this.
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The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
Copyright © Suzette Richards 2023
PS: As with the Fibonacci sequence, prime numbers are also found in nature. It was found that cicadas only leave their burrows at intervals of 7, 13, or 17 years, depending on the species.