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Unread 04-03-2012, 12:49 AM
Cyn Neely's Avatar
Cyn Neely Cyn Neely is offline
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Default Essay ideas

OK don't jump on me. I am just in the thinking stage and I am stymied for an essay topic for my degree program. But here is what I am thinking so I am looking for sources. I am thinking of writing about the contemporary sonnet. None of the fine poets with whom I am working even recognize formal poetry when I submit it. Doesn't matter even if I tell them what it is, sonnet, ghazal, haiku...they don't seem to get, based on suggestions for edit, that I am trying to write within a form. So I am thinking, maybe writing an essay on the importance of form in contemporary poetry might edify them as well as me. So any sources would be appreciated (I know that may sound a bit vague, but I figure something will come to me once I start looking at suggestions)
oh I do sound dumb
help
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Unread 04-03-2012, 01:35 AM
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John Whitworth John Whitworth is offline
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John Fuller, the poet son of a poet father, wrote a little book about the sonnet, though it wasn't the modern sonnet. Most poets worth a damn have written sonnets so the form isn't moribund. I think it would be an excellent topic. But then of course I would.
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Unread 04-03-2012, 02:34 AM
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Susan d.S. Susan d.S. is offline
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Stephen Burt has a new book on the sonnet, The Art of the Sonnet.
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Unread 04-03-2012, 02:54 AM
Christopher ONeill Christopher ONeill is offline
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There is a poem by Miles Burrows called minipoet which was once very famous (at least in the UK). Miles Burrows is one of those rare poets who genuinely seems to have been a one hit wonder.
Burrows was targeting mainly The Group, but does a rather deft job of both demonstrating and critiquing how the postmodernist retractions of both The Movement and The Group were often simply excuses for a certain timidity both with form and with subject matter. (Of course, the failure of nerve was a far more important feature of the bad poets in both clans).

Freeform, and especially Open Field or LANGUAGE methods, have often been a cover for the complementary character defect:- emotional elephantiasis. But sloppy drunks are harder to make fun of than costive accountants; so Simic doesn't get parodied the way Larkin does.

But I have always suspected that one could produce an efficacious limpetmine by running minipoet alongside a genuinely innovative modern formal poem (something like Geoffrey Hill's Requiem for the Plantagenet Kings) while contrasting it with any of the more vatic postmodern pieces which are effectively soufflés (Nikki Giovanni, Rita Dove?).

One wouldn't need to go into any great detail: closereading alone should be enough to show that huge swathes of the contemporary poetry roadshow are shooting duds (writing blank cheques sounds nicer).

Though I can't help thinking that anyone who doesn't recognise strictform when they see it wouldn't really meet my criteria for a fine poet.

I had a huge amount of respect for Bob Cobbing, who I knew fairly well during the mid 1970's. He detested form of any sort: but he knew what it was.
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Unread 04-03-2012, 03:44 AM
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Tony Barnstone Tony Barnstone is offline
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I have a manifesto on the contemporary sonnet you might or might not find useful. It's here: http://www.cortlandreview.com/featur...rnstone_e.html

Enjoy,

Tony
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Unread 04-03-2012, 05:40 AM
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Maryann Corbett Maryann Corbett is offline
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In the Summer 2009 Dark Horse (I think), A.E. Stallings reviewed a sonnet collection and made some sharp points about the non-sonnet nature of some of the material collected there. Some of that might be helpful. Also see her essay "Crooked Roads Without Improvement."

Check Rose Kelleher's Poetry Page for links to various pieces that might help you.

Since it sounds like the points you need to defend are (1) the value of adhering to the traditional rules of a form, and (2) the value of using actual meter at all, you may want to make use of the basic New Formalist defenses--now if I can just remember where to find them! I'll bet there's ample bibliography in Timothy Steele's All the Fun's In How You Say A Thing. They do seem to be legion, the folks who believe that meter is permanently defunct after the Modernists.

(I can remember trying to work on certain other po boards and having my work revised with no apparent awareness that I was writing in meter. Grrrr.)

Good luck!
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Unread 04-03-2012, 05:45 AM
A. E. Stallings A. E. Stallings is offline
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Thanks for the nod, Maryann!

Don Paterson, a brilliant practitioner himself, has a terrific little essay on the sonnet in his introduction to 101 Sonnets. Some of his numerology is a stretch even for me, but it is a sharp and thought-provoking piece.
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Unread 04-03-2012, 05:46 AM
A. E. Stallings A. E. Stallings is offline
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PS--part of me thinks, er, what kind of program is this, where even the fine poets you are working with don't "recognize" received forms? Maybe you should be elsewhere?
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Unread 04-03-2012, 06:16 AM
Mary McLean Mary McLean is offline
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I'm not sure how well it would go down in an academic thesis, but Stephen Fry's book The Ode Less Travelled is a passionate argument in favor of form as well as a cracking read. It was one of my main inspirations to start writing.
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Unread 04-03-2012, 06:49 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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I'm glad to hear Fry inspired someone, but for me the first chapter or two were brilliant and the rest was a bore.

I don't think beginners are prejudiced against form at all. In fact, people who don't know much about poetry typically think of it as something that rhymes, whether it's Hallmark verse or a sonnet.

The people who are prejudiced against form are free verse poets who have never written in form. I know from my own experience that some of these people are reachable. As an undergraduate majoring in English, I never once had any course (writing or literature) in which anyone ever discussed meter, taught me to scan, taught me what "meter" actually meant, encouraged me to write in meter, or touched on the subject of form per se. I'm sure I would have been receptive if someone had tried to teach me, but I was just a kid and I trusted the professors to guide me. This set me on the wrong course for years to come, and it was Eratosphere that eventually opened my eyes. I wish I had read the right essay years earlier.
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