(Crossposted to Redstate, umm, last week)
It’s just a random Friday observation, but the Beastie Boys could do great and terrible things with GK Chesterson’s Lepanto. In fact, hip-hop/rap/whathaveyou and Chesterson would be a fascinating mix in general…
(pause)
Good to get that thought out of my brain.
You know…the bass line sorta writes itself.
The “killeth/dreadeth/hateth” stuff would sound great backed up by heavy scratching! I suspect the song would run long, but I agree that it would be fascinating.
Oh yeah…GK Chesterizzle is one of my peeps.
What amazed me–aside from the twisted genius required to make this connection–was that I could so easily hear it as performed by the Beastie Boys.
Why is that? Is it the words, or is there a rhyme or meter scheme that’s especially suited to hip hop? I assume the latter.
Can you recommend a good source to learn about meter in general? I only started liking to read poetry after school, let alone writing it, so I never did much close reading or diagramming. I can rhyme in a pinch but I absolutely suck at meter. I know English is supposed to fall naturally into iambic pentameter but it doesn’t work that me for me.
English actually works best with ante-penultimate stress (clusters of three), since that’s the natural stress of the language. Plus it sounds waltzy. To me, iambic pentameter sounds like a nursery rhyme.
“Can you recommend a good source to learn about meter in general?”
Why yes. Two, even. Sadly, prosody doesn’t get as much literature as meter.