16.

Zoom out. Charles Olson claims that the syllable constitutes the minimal element of writing — what he calls “the smallest particle of all,” situated at “the place of the elements,” of the “minims of language” — these “particles of sound,” each like a lone note of music.¹⁹ Olson insists that the syllable represents, for him, the “source of speech” — a “minimum” that underpins the euphony of poetry; and consequently, he argues that poets must attend to the juxtaposition of syllables (rather than to the orchestration of either rhyme or metre).²⁰ He argues, in effect, that lines of verse must consist, at first, of syllables, each one a point of sound, and together these lines produce a “field” of composition (possibly implying that a syllable is a zero dimension, from which the higher orders of both a one-dimensional line and a two-dimensional text might arise).