French alexandrine can be dated exactly: 1886; in this year, editor Gustave Kahn published several seminal ' poems in his review ', including poems by Arthur Rimbaud (written over a decade previously) and Jules Laforgue, with more following in the next years. ' shed all metrical and prosodic constraints, such as verse length, rhyme, and caesura; Laforgue said, "I forget to rhyme, I forget about the number of syllables, I forget about stanzaic structure." French alexandrine The French alexandrine () is a syllabic poetic meter of (nominally and typically) 12 syllables with a medial caesura dividing the line into two hemistichs (half-lines)
A Lecture on Modern Poetry poetry was akin to religion. It is nothing of the sort." Hulme discusses how forms rise and fall, and proceeds to the topic of French "vers libre," referring to Gustave Kahn's explanation of the technique: "It consisted in a denial of a regular number of syllables as the basis of versification. The length of the line is long and short, oscillating with the images used by the poet; it follows the contours of his thought and is free rather than regular." Hulme concludes with a call to arms: "a shell is a very suitable covering for the egg at a