Transpose (Verb)
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Pronunciation: [trænz-‘poz]

Definition 1: To switch places, to interchange, to put A in B’s position and B in A’s position; (mathematics) to move a term from one side of an equation to the other; (music) to convert a musical piece to another key.

Usage 1: Today’s word is the progenitor of a large family of derivatives. There is an active and passive adjective, transpositive "can transpose, transposes" and transposable "can be transposed." Someone, say, a musician, who transposes is a transposer and the act or result of transposing is a transposition. So after the transposition of a piece of music from C major to A major, the version in A major is a transposition (of the version in C major). The noun, "transposition," has its own adjective, "transpositional" and an adverb, "transpositionally."

Suggested usage: Many languages permit the transposition of words. In German, for instance, you create questions by transposing the subject and verb of the equivalent positive statement: Sie geht ins Kino "She is going to the movies" becomes a question if you transpose the first two words: Geht sie ins kino? "Is she going to the movies?" English learners often accidentally transpose the middle [e] and when writing "receive."

To transpose transpose trapsnose! ;D

I must confess that I have used transpose instead of translate when taking liberties of the original text like "transposing" a haiku poem from Japanese into Swedish.  Did I do wrong?

I would say that you cannot translate a poem into another language, only interpret it in another language.

If you translate the words you are left without poetry!

John

[quote author=KatyBr link=board=todays;num=1055510375;start=0#4 date=07/01/03 at 16:53:01]
... but what really separates prose from poetry is the essence of poetry, the soul’s yearning to express itself through the written word.

Ah, I agree with you on that. I have very little patience with modern poetry that has neither rhyme not meter!

John

I read somewhere that a poem shouldn’t be considered such if it can be written down as sentences with normal punctuation. I’ve always struggled with whether that definition is accurate. For example:

My friends laugh at the library
They scorn the frosty sublime
Still nights ring with churchbells
but they don’t hear the chime
If sleep was but a pathway
and dreams reality
They’d all endure endless fatigue
for fear of what could be

Poem, or no poem?

Poem, or no poem?

Leaves me cold ...

John

[quote author=stickler link=board=todays;num=1055510375;start=0#7 date=07/01/03 at 17:15:26]I read somewhere that a poem shouldn’t be considered such if it can be written down as sentences with normal punctuation. I’ve always struggled with whether that definition is accurate. For example:

My friends laugh at the library
They scorn the frosty sublime
Still nights ring with churchbells
but they don’t hear the chime
If sleep was but a pathway
and dreams reality
They’d all endure endless fatigue
for fear of what could be

Poem, or no poem?

Poem or prose? Poem IMHO.

Here is one of mine:

Alien

A lonely voice
In a lonely place,
An empty sound
In empty space.
A child’s cry
That no one answers,
Echoes nowhere
I can place

I use or omit punctuation as part of the construction of the poem. Poems are meant to be read out loud; or at least spoken in the mind. I omit final punctuation so as to leave the reader wondering if indeed the end has been reached as well as to consider possible paths of thought. Perhaps as an echo.

Patricia/AgDrgn

Since when did punctuation define poetry? Good lord.
All of the examples so far have been very nice poems indeed. My theory is, you can tell prose because the lines are longer. Anyway, it’s poetry if you think it is. Far as I know, there’s nobody owns the franchise.

- PW

[quote author=John Rastall link=board=todays;num=1055510375;start=0#3 date=07/01/03 at 16:46:56]I would say that you cannot translate a poem into another language, only interpret it in another language.

If you translate the words you are left without poetry!

John

And I who thought an interpreter was busy translating spoken words.  There is something missing here.  No?

The essense of poetry is in the mind of the poet first, then in the mind of a sympathetic listener (or reader).  The essense of poetastry follows the same pattern.

Thomas Crandall’s Rhyme

In waiting there’s always the hope of it,
Of finding nobody to cope with it.

Though bathtubs don’t always have soap in ‘em,
Languages always have "nope" in ‘em.

So I hope without waiting,
And say without stating,
"I slip but don’t skate,
On death’s hollow fate,"
And pray that the pipe contain opium.

Sitran

Thanks, Katy!  It’s good to be back!

I guess that I should have explained "Thomas Crandall’s Rhyme" alittle.

He died in the Spanish Flu Epidemic after the Great War.  The flu took him, his wife, three daughters and a son.  They are all buried in a cross formation with a central headstone.  They died within weeks of each other.  It must have been very trying.  I wrote that poem in my adolescent mordid period.  

Sure am glad that passed!

Sitran

Great to see you back, Sitran.

I wrote that poem in my adolescent mordid period.

Well, at least you had a poetic morbid period as an adolescent. I only remember having had a gormless period, a nervous-about-girls period and an abnoxious period. I’m sure my parents would have prefered morbid.  :)

This nonsense about Real Poetry is starting to put me in a morbid geriatric period. Does one have to be a T.S.Eliot or a Marlowe to produce Poetry? I’m guessing that even T.S. had his off days. Again, there’s crappy poetry and there’s good poetry. If a person can’t tell the difference, nevermind. Life goes on.

- PW

Very funny, and very serious, Katy.  Chillingly morbid, ornately humorous!

PW, who can tell the fakes from the real poems?  I agree, if it’s good you know it, if it’s bad nobody probably read it anyway.  

And by the way, does "omnia mea porto mecum" mean "I carry all my things with me?"

(All that’s mine I carry with me.)  Who said that?  Diogenes?  Aristocles? And how would they have said it in Greek?

I’m not recognizing ‘mecum’ like I should.  Is it like ‘filiique (sp)’?

Sitran

"Mecum" means ‘with me’ insofar as I know.
"Filiique" means ‘and sons’ insofar as I know.
How ‘with me’ would be like ‘and sons’ confounds me.

Thank you, Palaeosophist!

They are alike in their compoundness for one thing, and in the reversal of order for another thing.  I guess I did recognize ‘mecum’.

There is ‘et filii’, isn’t there an equivalent (older?) expression for ‘mecum’?

Palaeosophist, please don’t be confounded!

I still want to know where the phrase came from!

Sitran