Tag: Nicholson Baker

When I really want to be soothed and reminded of why people bother to fiddle with sentences, I often read poetry.

So I really began as a failed poet – although when I first wanted to be a writer, I learned to write prose by reading poetry.

From my music training, I knew that, some Spanish rhythms apart, 5/4 is a time signature used only in the modern era. Holst’s Mars from the Planets is 5/4. But if you speak lines of poetry in that pattern you just end up hitting the off-beats. It’s only when you add a rest – a sixth beat – that it sounds as it surely should sound.