The other day I tried an experiment. I took the rhythmic phrase “Romeo and Juliet” and created a stream-of-consciousness poem out of it right then and there — more or less trying to write a poem the way Jackson Pollock painted a picture.
Mostly I was drawn to the rhythm of the phrase “Romeo and Juliet” with its seven syllables, accents on the first and fifth — seven eighth notes and a rest in 2/4 time.
The rhythm inspired me to go for a beat vibe, but I wasn’t really satisfied with the result. It’s hard to do justice to an epic tale in just a few verses. Imagine Tolkien trying to squeeze his famous saga down to a few lines: “Frodo was short. He had a ring. Gandalf wore a hat.”
See what I mean? It lacks a certain something.
Yet that rhythmic phrase “Romeo and Juliet” with its wonderfully musical cadence has been rolling insistently around in my head; I can feel it working overtime somewhere in the back of my brain. It may just burst out again one of these days.