Poetic term of the day -- May 9, 2008

PROLEPSIS (proh-LEP-sus): The application of an adjective to a noun in anticipation of the action of the verb, as in, "while plows turn the furrowed field."

above: Hilda Doolittle

http://www.poeticbyway.com/glossary.html

Comments

[DL]

So that's what prolepsis is! Rapidly I sat on the dock of a bay wasting time and dreaming of running the hundred meters in ten seconds flat. I feel like M. Jourdain in "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme," with the differenece that he has been speaking French all his life without knowing it, and I haven't. And here's to you, Moliere! And you too, Voltaire! You flourished over there! Tis pity thy virtues are so often lost on the long twisting road that leads here or nowhere (i..e, Utopia).