the.com/verse
a cage measured in breaths that somehow sets the words free
means A single line or stanza of poetry or song, or poetry itself as a form of metrical, structured writing.
from From Latin 'versus,' meaning a turning — the same word for a furrow in a plowed field. Picture the ox reaching the row's end and turning back: 'versus' was that turn. Roman scribes borrowed it for the moment a line of writing turns and begins anew, and so 'verse' has always carried that sense of language plowed into deliberate rows.
- latin root
- versus meant the turn of a plow
- line break
- that turn became the line ending itself
- bible
- chapter verses added centuries after writing
- rap
- sixteen bars became the standard verse length
- universe
- shares that turning root: one turned whole
the odyssey — homer's epic poem of 12,000+ lines composed in ancient greece around 8th century bce
beowulf — old english epic poem of 3,182 lines about a warrior fighting monsters, written between 700-1000 ce
paradise lost — john milton's 10,565-line poem about satan and the fall of man, published 1667