Herb, et. al.,
I'm still having trouble posting to the list as a reply to other
posts, so this may evolve into a catch all post.
Herb, there was a group of poets, led by Charles Olson, who talked
about the relationship between breath and the poetic line. It was a
productive, influential group, including Robert Creeley, Denise
Levertov, and Robert Duncan. Allen Ginsberg was at the periphery of it;
he often referred to his long line as "bardic breath." Olson's ideas
were laid out most expressly in his Essay on Projective Verse, around
1950 if my memory is correct. It's still a very current influence on a
number of poets.
Halliday and Greaves Intonation in the Grammar of English
(Equinox) has finally hit print. Bill Greaves, Peter Elbow, and I will
be conducting a full day workshop on intonation at 4C's in March. I'm
mostly going to be adding a teacher's perspective on how understanding
intonation can be used in the classroom. Bill Greaves will be guiding
us (I include myself as an apprentice) into a hands-on understanding of
how it works in practice. Peter elbow has had a long time interest in
"enlisting the virtues of speech" as a writing teacher. We will be
approaching intonation as a neglected area.
As I understand it, it's not so much "pauses" that we hear, but the
rise and fall of sound waves, which rise and fall in both pitch and
volume. An intonation group can be followed by another without pause
(on one breath). It is a way of chunking information and also a way of
conferring emphasis. The default group is not so much the sentence as
it is the clause.
Craig