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10familiar systems of meter.” 21 But Collins did not complete the task ofcompiling a taxonomy of line-forms. The phrase-structure rules andtransformation rules he formulates generate less than half of the lines in hiscorpus. Incomplete as Collins’ analysis is, it describes with a degree ofprecision a set of line-types that occur in very different proportions withinone poem as opposed to another. The divergent proportions and anyimplications there from in terms of genre or style or history of prosodydeserve further study.A simple fact is worth noting: Collins’ analysis does not contradict theclassical description. After all, there are multiple ways of determining what awell-formed line is. A taxonomy based on grammatical structures is oneway. A system of measurement based on stress parallelisms might beanother. Collins makes the same point:[T]he Hebrew verse-line is far too complex and delicate a thing to respond toany one-track investigation. The line is made up different layers – grammaticalstructure, semantic structure, stress patterns, syllable counts, alliteration – and afull stylistic analysis can only be achieved when we have observed thefunctioning of each layer individually and then studied how collectively theyinteract and contribute in different ways to the overall effect of the line. 22James Kugel’s Idea of Biblical Poetry stands, on the theoretical plane,over against the classical description. 23 His polemics are not without salutarycomponents. Nevertheless, Alter’s critique of Kugel’s rejection of importantfeatures of the classical description, which I will not summarize here, is spoton. 24 The value of Kugel’s work lies in the attention to detail in his exegesis.Kugel’s insights into the phenomenon of semantic parallelism, worked outindependently and more systematically by Alter, represent a refinement ofthe classical description, not a challenge to it.There is more agreement between Kugel’s idea of biblical poetry and theclassical description than meets the eye. As Kugel states in Great Poems ofthe Bible:21 Terence Collins, Line-forms in Hebrew Poetry: A Grammatical Approach to the StylisticStudy of the Hebrew Prophets (Studia Pohl, Series Maior 7; Rome: Biblical Institute Press,1978) 16.22 Line-forms, 227, quoted in Donn W. Leatherman (An Analysis of Four Current Theoriesof Hebrew Verse Structure [Ph.D. diss., McGill University, Montreal, 1998] 54-55), athttp://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape10/PQDD_0028/NQ50205.pdf.23 James L. Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1981; repr. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).24 Art of Biblical Poetry, xi, 4, 6, 8, 10, 18-19.
11[T]he poetry of the Bible . . . is characterized by an ideal sentence form that isrepeated line after line. . . . the sentence form consists of two parts, A and B. .. . The parts are separated by a brief pause . . . and end in a full stop. . . . B25is always a continuation of A.Strange to say, Kugel’s method of formatting a poem does nothing tohighlight his analysis. Here is how he formats his translation of the openinglines of Psalm 104:Bless the LORD, O my soul -- O Lord my God,You are very great.Clothed in glory and honor, You wrapped Yourself in light.Then You put up the sky like a tent and covered it over with water.The clouds You took as Your chariot and rode off on the wings of the wind.The winds themselves You made messengers, and flames of fire Yourservants. 26Formatting that reveals the “A continued by B” scheme might look like this:Bless the LORD, O my soul --O Lord my God,You are very great.Clothed in glory and honor,You wrapped Yourself in light.Then You put up the sky like a tentand covered it over with water.The clouds You took as Your chariotand rode off on the wings of the wind.The winds themselves You made messengers,and flames of fire Your servants.M. O’Connor’s Hebrew Verse Structure is a monumental study. 27Frustrated by the antiquated and fuzzy categories of the classical description,25 James L. Kugel, The Great Poems of the Bible: A Reader’s Companion with NewTranslations (New York: Free Press, 1999) 19. Kugel remarks that verb ellipsis is “just asimportant as parallelism” as a means for creating a feeling of connectedness between the Aand B segments of a poetic line (21). The phenomena of ellipsis, enjambment, and chiasmusare part of the glue that holds a text together, but occur far less often than parallelisms occur.On the subject of ellipsis, see Cynthia L. Miller, “A Linguistic Approach to Ellipsis inBiblical Poetry: (Or, What to Do When Exegesis of What is There Depends on What Isn’t),”BBR 13 (2003) 251-70.26 Great Poems, 26.27 Michael Patrick O’Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1980;reissued 1997 with “The Contours of Biblical Hebrew Verse, An Afterword to HebrewVerse Structure” [pp. 631-61]).
Page 1 and 2: Retaining and TranscendingThe Class
Page 3 and 4: 3noted that poetic texts in the Heb
Page 5: 5Restatements of the Classical Desc
Page 8 and 9: 8instances. 15 Similar analyses und
Page 12 and 13: 12he chucks the description overboa
Page 14 and 15: 14A New DescriptionIf there is a pa
Page 16: 16The levels of the prosodic hierar
Page 19 and 20: 19and keep to the paths of the righ
Page 21 and 22: 21boundaries of a section are never
Page 23 and 24: 23Obad 12Zeph 1:2-3Ps 119:62-64Woul
Page 25 and 26: 25line in which the line’s second
Page 27 and 28: 27length may have been intuitive ra
Page 29 and 30: 29with the general rule, the length
Page 31 and 32: 31novel subdivision of a poem, or d

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