[David Rosenthal]

Not to be all "me, me, me" but another thing I have enjoyed playing with is having a rhyme scheme at odds with the stanza length. For example, a poem that if presented in tercets would rhyme the first and third lines, arranged in quatrains, to wit:

axab xbcx cdxd exef xfgx ghxh

Or rhyming quatrains broken into tercets:

aba bcd cde fef ghg hij ij k lkl

The key of course is that the breaks are sensible and serve the poem, but the tension between the stanza architecture and the rhyme scheme can produce interesting effects.

Meanwhile, I agree with Gregory. I great exercise could come from simply selecting random Hardy poems and imitating the meter and rhyme schemes.

David

[Max Goodman]

Originally Posted by Chris Childers

I wouldn't disagree that nonce stanzas are "standard tools," but it seems to me the trick is to find stanza forms that seem uniquely and unparaphrasably appropriate to the subject matter

The same should be true nonce or not.

I would think nonce should be a poet's default technique, unless there's reason to use an existing form. Each poem, after all, seeks to be unique. Not being able to see how the subject matter specifically invites its particular nonce form doesn't bother me any more than not being able to see why the poem is in iambic pentameter.

Even the best formalist magazines invite (or invited last I looked) the impression that formalist poets use iambic pentameter as the default, unless they find stanza forms that seem uniquely and unparaphrasably appropriate to the subject matter. Reading those magazines, I started to understand how free verse has gotten (relative to formal, with its reputation as cookie-cutter verse) so popular.

Second thought: It wasn't that nearly every poem used iambic pentameter (though most did), but that nearly every poem used only one rhythm and line length, so that line became that poem's cookie cutter. Poems used nonce forms including varied lines far more rarely than I could think of a good reason for.

[Orwn Acra]

Janice has mentioned John Hollander and "Kinneret" from Harp Lake. It is a wonderful poem, truly strange and mystical, if a little overlong. Hollander invented many forms, the double dactyl being the most famous. Another from Harp Lake with a novel use of a palindrome:

At a Forest Pool

Here sad self-lovers saw in tragic error
Some lovely other or another sky;
In your reversing yet unlying mirror
[indent]I saw I was I.

Quatrains are not nonce forms, but as the poem plays with the Narcissus myth, it causes one to rethink the possibilities of palindromes outside of their usual jokiness.

[Chris Childers]

Originally Posted by Max Goodman

The same should be true nonce or not.

I would think nonce should be a poet's default technique, unless there's reason to use an existing form. Each poem, after all, seeks to be unique. Not being able to see how the subject matter specifically invites its particular nonce form doesn't bother me any more than not being able to see why the poem is in iambic pentameter.

I sort of agree with this. That is, I agree with what you say about the mechanical use of iambic pentameter. I think what you say about nonce being the "default" is a good way of looking at things and a useful belief to hold, though probably not the way it always happens in practice. That is, I doubt experienced poets always need to invent or "discover" appropriate forms. I think that an early, intuitive perception that this poem should be in envelope quatrains, or this one in terza rima, or this one in 5-3-3-5 stanzas with interlocking rhyme, is not uncommon when people know what they are doing. I also think that the opposite approach--starting with a form and discovering the subject matter--can, in the right hands, be equally generative. In theory, I'm with you--we should find our shapes as we go; in practice, I think the form can mold itself to the subject, or the subject to the form; the result is what matters.

I also feel, as Maryann quotes me above, that not all formal choices need be equally brilliant and expressive; sometimes a quatrain or sonnet is suitable because it fits the shape of the thought, and that's it. The important point is that we are thoughtful & not mechanical about our choices, and that we try different things, since I again agree with Maryann that formal variation in a collection is pleasurable for its own sake.

C

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Max Goodman

Each poem, after all, seeks to be unique.

I actually wonder about this claim. We've all heard some casually assert it about certain poets, and upon investigation it turns out to be unfounded. But I'm more interested in the opposing cases.

Think, for example, of the recognizable stanzas. Just off the top of my head, I can think of many whose stanzas we'd all recognize at sight: Byron, Spenser, Berryman. A little digging would likely bring up many others.

It's become something of a cliche to pretend we're all disciples of the architectural rationalists, like Louis Sullivan, who coined that 'form follows function' trope in 1896. But while we pay it lip service, and hope to be thought cool for doing so, how many of us actually believe it? How many really practice it?

My only point here is that there's something to be said for exploring the limits of one stanza or another for more than one poem, for developing an experienced facility in a particular form. No matter what we say, we all believe this... at least, everyone reading this who has published more than one sonnet necessarily does...

Best,

Bill

[Max Goodman]

Originally Posted by W.F. Lantry

I actually wonder about this claim. We've all heard some casually assert it about certain poets, and upon investigation it turns out to be unfounded.

I think you've misunderstood me, Bill. (We don't appear to disagree about anything.) By "each poem seeks to be unique" I didn't mean that each poem requires a unique form, only that it doesn't seek to duplicate another poem. The only poet for whom that modest claim can prove unfounded is the uninspiring Xerox.

[Maryann Corbett]

I'm pleased that people have things to say about the subject of choosing or creating a form.

It's probably obvious, so I'll confess that one of my motives in starting this thread was purely selfish: It has often happened that a freshly encountered form will set off a poem for me, at least if it touches the fuse of the right material. (I seem to be lacking the right material just now.) Does this work for anyone else?

Should nonce form be the default, as Max says? I'm not sure of that, though I am sure, at least on my own part, that I can lose my hold on fresh language if I let too many elements be predetermined for too long. I think other brains work differently; some people can concentrate better on interesting diction if all the other formal elements are decided in advance.

I seem to need a metrical decision (iambs? dactyls?) before I can begin, to set the pendulum swinging, as it were. I know a number of people who complain that their lines come out iambic as a default mode.

To Bill's point about getting to know one form deeply: I wish that repeating a form really meant I was getting to know it better. It may only mean I'm stuck in a brain rut.

The love of novelty in form probably also explains why, as a reader, I can devour a book of poems that mixes up forms, while a book all in one form I can only nibble a bit at a time, which means I miss the larger structure for quite a while. I tend to agree the Larkin method of book construction.

Hmm, an awful lot of "I" here. I hope there's someone who shares these problems and cares to talk about them. Or that we have some more new forms to introduce.

[Gregory Dowling]

Just coming in here to remind people of the rule about Musing on Mastery: you are not allowed to post your own poems here.

[Janice D. Soderling]

If I can find a sample poem for quatern and leona rima, I'll edit them in.

They are so unusual that they aren't even in the Lewis Turco Book of Forms--at least not in mine though a new edition has come out and it may describe the form.

Edited in: I have discovered that the new Book of Forms includes a sample leona rima by our own Cathy Chandler. So if you have the new edition, you can check there.

If anyone knows examples feel free to post links to them. I'm not sure I'll find any, so don't be deterred if you know one, just post it. I'll keep track of it through the notifications.

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

One would have thought the rule about posting your own poems could have been waived in this instance. It's a bit difficult to introduce a novel form otherwise.

Duncan