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03-04-2013, 03:36 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lance Levens
is it possible that the urge to find newer forms is merely an admission--this is brazenly autobiographical-- than one can't master the old ones.
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What does it mean to master a form?
Is finding and using a new form easier than using an old one? I think that if the form is built of formalist building blocks, it presents similar challenges, with the added step of devising an appropriate and workable form.
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03-05-2013, 08:26 AM
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Join Date: Feb 2006
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Lance wrote:
Quote:
is it possible that the urge to find newer forms is merely an admission--this is brazenly autobiographical-- than one can't master the old ones.
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I certainly won't claim that I've mastered any of the old forms. I keep at them, or perhaps they keep at me, obsessively.
But I'd like it not to be an obsession, or a tired habit, and that's one reason I'm looking for newness just now. Pushing the brain over the same track sometimes results in retread thinking, repeating themes I've used many times already, and failure to reach for fresh diction.
Another reason is that as a reader, I really do like variety better. The Larkin method of alternating short and long, dark and light, makes me happy. To infuse variety into a bunch of one's poems, one has to write varied stuff.
And I have the same question as Max: I'm not entirely sure what "mastering a form" would mean. Perhaps that too is a reason I don't focus on whether or not I've done so--although I have the greatest admiration for those of you who write those Nemerov-winning-and-placing sonnets.
To return to presenting examples, Amit Majmudar's poem in the current Poetry (see Susan's thread on Acc Mem) is nicely novel in form and in its punning approach.
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03-09-2013, 08:01 AM
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Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Philadelphia, PA
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Maryann,
I'm late as usual, but I do seek out new forms (even invented one recently which will show up soon....)
In the lone poem of mine that got into SCR I copied a meter and rhyme scheme from Richard Wilbur.
Then there's Bob Newman's site, which has a wealth of oddball forms:
http://www.volecentral.co.uk/vf/index.htm
I love the Virelai post-moderne, which I think is his own invention.
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03-09-2013, 01:40 PM
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Thanks especially for the link, Esther. I realize now I'd stumbled onto that site before, but now I'm in a state of mind to appreciate it and will make better use of it. It will take some sorting out to separate the rarely used from the newly invented.
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03-09-2013, 01:47 PM
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Sweden
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Ah, Richard Wilbur! I was reading "Still, Citizen Sparrow" earlier today
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171799
and couldn't stop marveling.
He has used a simple envelope verse abba, and amazingly simple rhyme words, and created a poem so rich and complex that I hid under the bed for a while.
Not long though, it was too dusty!
I am still keen on trying out new forms, but when I get my moxie back, I will exercise using envelope stanzas.
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04-20-2014, 07:57 AM
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I'm resurrecting this thread to note that Bob Newman's volecentral.co.uk site appears to be gone, but much of the content thereof is in his book Fifty Shades of Verse, which is available as a Kindle book on Amazon. No print edition, alas.
Esther
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04-21-2014, 03:24 PM
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Los Angeles, CA
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Nonce Sense
Hi All,
An article I published some time ago on the contemporary sonnet has a number of nonce rhyme strategies, if you scroll down to:
COUNTER-PRINCIPLE IV: USE SLANT, SIGHT, REPETITION, INCLUSION, ANTONYM, HOMOGRAPH, REVERSE RHYME, AND bouts rimes INSTEAD OF TRUE RHYME
Here's the link: http://www.cortlandreview.com/featur...rnstone_e.html
Enjoy, Tony
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05-02-2014, 01:05 PM
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Join Date: May 2013
Location: Sydney, Australia
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It's a long essay so I will come back to it and read it more thoroughly. I also have thought about the free verse v metrical dilemma. 40 years ago many magazines would stipulate 'no rhymed or metrical verse accepted' it was considered old fashioned and I suppose the editors were tired of being inundated by pale copies of Keats et al. Like everyone else I wrote almost exclusively in free verse and used various strategies to make my poems 'modern' particularly writing short poems that imitated advertising. Very limiting, but then 1970's poetry was in serious decline, the new media of LP records and cassettes meant song-writers were the gods and people got their metrical fix from songs and not just the poetic songwriters like Bob Dylan and the whole hippy era, it started much earlier. Recorded music meant people could listen over and over to a record, so lyrics could be complex and/or poetic. They always have been of course, but now song writers could make a very good living from it, poets were 'starving in an attic'.
Free verse was a reaction to the stale feeling of metrical, especially of rhyme, but free verse also had obvious limitations and problems. The main one I think is the fact that metrical verse is easy to remember and quote, it leaks into our conversational repertoire, free verse as rule doesn't, it was much more an intellectual exercise.
The media is very important to poetry, unlike music, poetry has not had a change in media since the printing press, 'slim volumes of verse' became a derogatory term. Poetry readings, again an image reeking of pretentiousness. But we all know that's not so, poetry is magic, so what happened?
Well we were inundated with fabulous musical poetry, you know the list, Dylan, Cohen, Mitchell, Young, and many many more bands and singer songwriters filled the airwaves with poetry. 45s, LPs, cassettes, CD's, videos, film, radio; new media were helping songs like crazy to spread their message. Written poetry shrunk. I think that is where the problem lies. It didn't matter what style of poetry you wrote, nothing sold very much.
Some say they are sick of traditional forms, that free verse frees you. Nonsense, original poetry takes original talent, it's all about content, about lived experience, about having something to say. If you don't have that, well, what do you have, empty forms.
I am thrilled with the internet, who'd've thought a technology first used by the military would be such a boon to poetry.
'The medium is the message' or at least a good part of it. Bring it all on, all styles, all forms and all techniques. It might not last! But at the moment we can read poems as they are born, I find it thrilling.
You no longer have to publish books, enter competitions or submit to magazines or ezines perforce. Put it up on Eratosphere and you have an instant, understanding and critical audience. What more could a poet want, if you want money, well write novels like Hardy or get a job in publishing like Eliot, but really what's it matter, you want people to read your work, that's where the payoff is.
Sorry, this has turned into a bit of a rant but I've thought about this for some time. I love all forms of poetry, if they're good. Techniques? well as long as they're not intrusive, as long as 'technique' does take over the poem and drown out it's theme. That can happen with free verse as well as sonnets.
'make all things new'
kind regards
Ross
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05-02-2014, 03:11 PM
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Join Date: Aug 2007
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Quote:
You no longer have to publish books, enter competitions or submit to magazines or ezines perforce. Put it up on Eratosphere and you have an instant, understanding and critical audience. What more could a poet want, if you want money, well write novels like Hardy or get a job in publishing like Eliot, but really what's it matter, you want people to read your work, that's where the payoff is.
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One might remind here that Eratosphere is not a vanity site. The purpose of this workshop is NOT to post to be read by a wider public than the poet would otherwise reach.
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05-03-2014, 05:11 AM
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Join Date: May 2013
Location: Sydney, Australia
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withdrawn, not worth it.
Last edited by ross hamilton hill; 05-03-2014 at 05:54 AM.
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