[Julie Steiner]

On the pro-form side, from a recent interview (here):

JEFFREY BROWN: Let me ask you, finally, I noticed in some of the more recent work, you're -- you're working more in poetic forms, sonnets, even a play on haiku in one area. Is there a reason for that? Is it the challenge or just wanting the form?

BILLY COLLINS: Well, I think the pleasure of form is that you have a companion with you besides all the poetry you have ever read. You have the form, which...

(CROSSTALK)

JEFFREY BROWN: You're always aware of those poets you have ever read?

BILLY COLLINS: I think the candles of the page are lit by those poets of the past.

You're -- to write poetry is to be very alone, but you always have the company of your influences. But you also have the company of the form itself, which has a kind of consciousness. I mean, the sonnet will simply tell you, that's too many syllables or that's too many lines or that's the wrong place.

So, instead of being alone, you're in dialogue with the form.

JEFFREY BROWN: As opposed to you have to telling yourself, well, it may be enough.

BILLY COLLINS: That's right. Right.

(LAUGHTER)

[Richard Meyer]

I like good poems, whatever their style or genealogy.

[Nicholas F.]

Thanks, Richard. I don't know why it has to be any more complicated than that.

[Julie Steiner]

A handful of relevant thoughts from grasshopper/Maz/M.A. Griffiths, on free verse and formalism:

***

[Sonnet Central--15 Feb 2004]

I write formal and free verse, approx 50/50 ratio. They both need discipline, I think – it’s just that the discipline of formal verse is more obvious.

***

[Eratosphere--18 March 2007]

My own feeling is that I write poems, and sometimes they happen to be formal, sometimes they’re free verse. I don’t think: oh, I’ll write a sonnet or whatever. Usually I have an preliminary idea of a line or a few phrases which will insist on being written – but those phrases usually suggest the final form (or free form), as if they carry a flavour of one or the other.

If I can confess something, I have often felt very, very discouraged about my formal verse by two poets I know, and whose work I admire, who have frequently told me that I should concentrate on free verse, and give up on my formal poems. It made me realise how much I enjoy the obvious discipline of writing a form, and the satisfaction of finishing it is somehow stronger than with a free piece. I think this is because there is a clearer sense of what is expected in a form. With a free verse piece, you have to establish its own form – it’s much harder to achieve any sense of completion.

I have never felt that writing free verse is easier than writing formal verse...or, correction, that writing good free verse is easier than writing formal verse.

***

[Burgundy--22 Nov 2002--A British member had written: “Only in America are free verse and formal verse so polarised...Over here, the free and the formal have co-existed for many years and long may they continue to do so.”]

For me, it’s all a bit reminiscent of the big debate between Big-Endians and Little-Endians in Gulliver’s Travels.
 Doesn’t matter to me, so long as the egg is fresh...

***

[The Poetry Kit's private list--18 Mar 2002]

I like some forms of poetry more than others (though I’m always ready to be persuaded by particular examples), but no form arouses my hatred.

What is it you don’t like about sonnets in particular? If nothing else, they teach a writer about metre, pacing and discipline, which are also essential for free verse, though some people seem to think that free verse is simply any old prose broken up into irregular lines.

***

[The Poetry Kit's private list--22 Mar 2002--responding to the following critique of Griffiths' villanelle:]

“I can’t see the point of doing them, other than as an exercise.”

It’s because poetic forms carry their own meaning. To some extent, the medium is the message, or at least contributes to it. It is part of the overall experience of a poem. With the shape of the form and the lines I chose to repeat, I tried to build up a certain atmosphere.

I think it’s shortsighted to dismiss formal poetry out of hand, just as it’s shortsighted to dismiss free verse, on the other hand. Both have their merits.

As for why use any strict form, well, why write a song lyric to a pattern, why not just chat randomly over music?

It’s because we respond to shape, rhythm and pattern. Often a statement that would strike us as trite becomes very moving as part of a lyric, and when a good poem is sung to haunting music...gulp...

***

[The Poetry Kit's private list--4 Apr 2002]

My own feeling is that both strict forms and free verse have their purpose and place and I don’t see either as intrinsically better. I do think that many people dismiss traditional forms as they find the discipline too hard. Actually, free verse has its own discipline, but it’s more subtle.

I would argue for a mixture, if only on the simple grounds of variety. My favourite modern poets are the ones who can move effortlessly between free verse and other forms. I don’t want an endless diet of free verse.

An opera has recitative and arias, which complement each other. Perhaps we can characterise free verse as the poet talking and traditional forms as the poet singing – both are valid.

Of course I’m not arguing for badly-written or stilted traditional forms, but I don’t think we should dismiss any forms out of hand. The trouble, it seems to me, is that many authors seem to think that traditional styles call for a certain sort of ‘high’ language, instead of using a modern tone.

At the other end of the scale, much modern poetry seems more like prose anecdotes chopped into irregular lines than poetry to me.

***

[The Poetry Kit's private list--28 Apr 2002]

As they say, rules are made to be broken, and I think anyone who can pontificate on what Good Poetry is, should be ignored. What matters, for each individual poem, is does it work? If anyone tells me that Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ is Bad Poetry because it rhymes, I will tell him he is an ass.

I felt your piece read like prose, which was only my opinion, but I do think a lot of modern poetry is prose broken up into irregular lines. I’m sure we all recognise there is a difference between prose and poetry, although there will always be blurring between the categories.

However, I think the real problem may be that there is no recognised outlet for short pieces of prose these days, apart from vaguely narrative pieces, so an author is almost forced to present a short piece of prose as a poem. How else can it be described?

In Elizabethan times there was a recognised short prose form for character studies. What a pity this was never widened or developed, as it would have sanctioned the short prose form, which I think many people want to write.

Of course, the discussion about the difference between prose and poetry is another thing. My own feeling is that prose tends to be a ‘narrowing-down’ to meaning whereas poetry tend to be an ‘opening-out’ of meaning. Prose and poetry usually employ different techniques – we are often aware of the compression of meaning in poetry, and, dare I say it, we expect a different sort of logic in prose.

However, I don’t think it does poetry any favours if we ignore its special quality, and accept anything presented with linebreaks as a poem. This may lead to a point where the poetical elements will be considered as too fussy and elaborate for poetry.

***

[The Pennine Poetry Works--13 Nov 2002]

I haven’t seen the crit concerned here, so my comments do not refer to that, but, in general, I would say there is definitely a fad these days for clipping words until a poem reads like telegraphese. Quite simply, it’s silly – often a little word (O, those articles!) is needed for the flow of the line. I sometimes wonder if the clippers read the lines aloud, or if they do, if they really listen.

I get the impression sometimes that some revisers think you are charged by the word. Poetry is not about expressing something in the fewest possible words.

I’m not arguing for superfluous words, but against the fashion that if it can be cut, it must be cut, whatever that does to the rhythm of the line, e.g., every definitive and indefinite article HAS TO GO. The result is a form of speech only seen in telegrams. It is plain ugly.

Probably writers who are accustomed to writing in strict metre appreciate the function of these little words more than those who only write free verse. I think that may be the root of the problem.

See, I don’t say ‘that may be root of problem’ in prose, so I don’t see why it’s obligatory to lose the articles in poetry. That’s the sort of silly telegraphese I’m objecting to, not sensible trimming.

***

[The Pennine Poetry Works--11 Jan 2003]

I find the shape of the words on a page, or screen, is very important to me. I wonder if it’s because I’ve done a bit of calligraphy, which makes you very aware of verbal patterns. I suppose I like the shape to be orderly, rather than ragged, unless the subject-matter is ragged.

With free verse, I find it often flows straight out in a solid chunk, with line breaks where it helps the sense, but no stanza breaks, and that’s how I used to present it; but I realised after a while that it is not easy to read verse set out like this, and it’s better to divide it up into more manageable segments.

Usually I find the poem tends to dictate the sort of stanzas needed, but sometimes it’s a matter of trial and error.

One thing I never used before I used the lists was the three-line stanza, with the sentences carried over from stanza to stanza. Once I tried it, this seemed to me an excellent form for conveying a certain type of thought process. It’s interesting that one of the rules for laying out a garden is to plant in groups of three – it just seems a very interesting and satisfying pattern.

I suppose I have a natural leaning towards symmetry in most circumstances, but sometimes the sense of a poem calls for asymmetry, and in free verse, I think the sense takes precedence.

***

[Sonnet Central--14 Apr 2004]

I think what [another member] was arguing against is the all-too-common assumption that if a sonnet isn’t couched in flowery language about love or similar Poetic subjects, then the only alternative is using ugly language and slang and writing about low subjects. This is rubbish. Language doesn’t have to be archaic to be poetic or beautiful, if the subject-matter calls for it. The sonnet is a wonderfully versatile form, which is suitable for any subject-matter.

Speaking personally, I have read more than enough sonnets in mock-Elizabethan diction to last me for the next 20 years. Basically, if a contemporary author wants to be taken seriously, s/he should not speak in a silly voice. That seems to be commonsense to me. Shakespearian English was natural for Shakespeare. It is not natural for a modern author.

There’s no need for antiquisms, unless they’re appropriate to the particular narrator or theme of a sonnet. Contemporary English can do everything that’s required of it. Why should it be looked down upon as somehow poetically inferior to Elizabethan English?

***

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

Originally Posted by Julie Stoner

about metre, pacing and discipline, which are also essential for free verse, though some people seem to think that free verse is simply any old prose broken up into irregular lines.

I would double-stress this part—so quoting it from Julie's excerpts of grasshopper.

I do think that, for me, so much hinges on the idea of verse, an idea I mentioned in my first comment here. Weighing, balancing lines; turning the poem's flow, focus, direction (however subtly) from line to line or from image to image or from thought to thought; etc. so that, simultaneously, freshness and surprise can happen in the flow but also the whole thing holds together and the parts hold together. I think that, most generally, it's a line-to-line turning, but I would not rule out other methods of verse.

Of the three terms I mentioned previously, I'd say that our ability to define them precisely runs from relatively simple to much more difficult. In order, from simplicity to difficulty:

• Meter
• Verse
• Poetry

I think meter, being the simplest to detect, define, may sometimes be where some poets, particularly beginning poets, stop. "Doing verse" would be a little more difficult. Achieving poetry seems to be the hardest—although what's weird is that they almost fit in reverse order when trying to guess which of the three is easiest to achieve by accident. I would guess that this two-way continuum would account for a lot of what happens in The World of Poetry (tm).

[Allen Tice]

Ever since I fully realized how interchangeable most examples of "free verse" are these days, I've moved away from it violently. The real test for me, though, is : is it effective? And I mean, really effective. Formal verse has tools barely available to free verse writing.

Of course, the reverse can be true. But most of the best effects in somewhat interesting free verse are spasmodic and confined to a sharp wording or image. They aren't sustained, or more likely, sustainable.

Likewise, there have been periods of time and places where most formal verse was crappy and as interchangeable as crappy modern free verse.

90% of everything is trivial. At least 90%. Right now, there are very few writers of free verse I respect. I could name only one that I think has the gift (usually, or often), and she's not on Eratosphere. The rest can start learning how to write formal verse and get those tools I spoke of. I respect many more formal writers, if only because they have to consistently work harder, and naturally it shows.

[Allen Tice]

Another post, since the last one was linked to a thread on the recently deceased British woman known as Grasshopper. If Grasshopper were still alive, I'd include her along with the unnamed (American) whom I sometimes admire greatly. (But that's just my taste. Others could say, Meh! Her? What's she got I don't got? This isn't the place for that.)

A different point is that I find that what often appeals in free verse (when it actually appeals to me) is something like "wit". A momentary flash of brilliance like a spark of gold in sand. These have to follow pretty closely one after the other for me to think, That is worth saving.

So much more richness is possible in formal writing, there are so many more things that can happen all at once, a polyphony and a continuity. Which isn't to say that they do happen; doggerel is formal verse too, feeble.

[Katherine Smith]

The artist and master painter Robert Henri said that "Craft is the visible edge of art." It is entirely possible to have complete control of craft--an admirable thing itself--and not a whit of artistry.

Art is the dark crystal, the intangible thing, the need of the total person to make tangible an intangible something. Craft can be pinned down but the art that gives it vibrancy and makes it live and breathe cannot be pinned down. It is the wild card. No amount of rhetoric will ever change that reality. It is the power behind the blade.

Free Verse and formal verse share certain aspects of craft. We all know what they are: image, rhythm (not meter), specific detail, blah blah. These are the aspects of poetry we obsess over because they ground us and make possible the bringing forth of the vision or "idea" (I use this word in a far more uncertain way than Curtis--certainty and poetry don't exactly make for good bedfellows). They are the common denominators of poetry. They are craft. Poetry needs some craft. But it doesn't need a cold perfection that puts craft before art. Craft serves art, not the other way around.

I love both formal and free verse: Jane Kenyon, Szmborska, Milosz ( a Catholic poet if there ever was one by the way), Kay Ryan, and many others. Often Free verse has a quality of joie de vivre and strangeness that formal verse can lack. But like all generalizations about poetry, this one can be riddled with counterexamples (will leave that to all of you) in less than ten seconds. I love sound and the way that formal verse can "pickle" the emotional tone of a thought in meter. That is one thing it does really well.

Finally, I went to a boot store last week to look at cowboy boots. They are so beautiful and I wanted every last one of them. But I could only afford one pair of boots (barely). I had to choose. I took home a pair of handmade brown calfskin boots, made in the USA.

Best,

Katherine

[dean peterson]

Bit my tongue, Katherine & others, on the free verse notion when I initially read the Chesterton quote here the other day (discretion and/or absolute silence is probably the better part of valor) but I will say now that, upon reconsidering the quote, I still can't actually tell if it is a compliment or a curse.

[Norman Ball]

Nicholas said (echoing Richard's "I like good poems, whatever their style or genealogy."), "I don't know why it has to be any more complicated than that."

There's nothing within the poem itself that's itching to find its proper shelf. What then brings that to the table? The compulsion to classfiy and establish phyla is the disease of "aesthetic Socratism...to be beautiful everything must be intelligible," It's the necessary precursor to denigrating those who don't fit and lionizing those who do. So it's political in nature with a not-so hidden agenda of defining exclusion, stoking resentments and minting luminaries & pretenders.

Politics. When simple pleasure isn't enough. Or, when aesthetic pleasure eludes, arranging things and people is the next best buzz.