[Bran Bronet]

Forgive any breaches of etiquette, but I am a newcomer here.

Form in poetry is not less difficult to grasp than that of content and readers need to understand the interaction between form and content. However, I do not believe that regularity of metre is a merit of verse.The notions about this as a virtue are historical and appear to be based on the cruder by-products of what used to be called a classical education, but as any reader will testify the ear quickly tires of strict regularity.

Based on this premise that poetry need not be regular and in fact is not regular in English, I was surprised to see the divisions in this place between metrical and non-metrical poetry. It seems to suggest that metrical patterns in verse is one thing, whilst those with non-metrical arrangements is another. This seems to me to be inimical to good reading of poetry which needs meaning or are we saying that poetic rhythm can be independent of sense?

I hope in time to produce some poetry on these pages, but I fear my attempts at regular metre do stray from the beat from time to time. If my metrical attempts are irregular will they get bounced? and if my free verse slips into iambs from time to time - what then?

The rhythm we ascribe to words is influenced by an apprehension of meaning so why the divisions?

[Maryann Corbett]

Bran, welcome to the Sphere. There might be as many ways of answering your question as there are members here. I'll try a partial one and hope others follow suit.

I don't think anyone here disagrees that strict regularity of meter would be boring. Knowing how to use variation, substitution, heterometrics--knowing how to mix up meter in all ways--is part of knowing how to use meter.

Still, the board was begun by people who hold the firm belief that the handling of poetic meter is a basic skill for poets. While not all poetry has to be metrical, and while meter alone doesn't make a good poem, meter is one of poetry's pleasures.

One of the things the board is about is teaching meter; another is looking at it pretty hard and thinking about it. When a poet decides not to use meter, he or she might want the poem to be evaluated a bit differently, which is why there is a non-met board.

The division doesn't always serve us perfectly, and only recently we've been talking about it again.

At the top of this particular board--and of all the others--you'll find a drop-down menu that lets you see posts as far back as they go. The critical boards aren't pruned, so they have the full history. You might want to take a look at the kinds of poetry and the sorts of questions members here are typically interested in.

And I'll bow out now, so that whoever thinks I'm totally bananas can have the floor.

(edited a bit later for typos and thinkos)

[Maryann Corbett]

I'm back again, Bran, because I see I didn't answer what may have been your main question. You wrote, "if my metrical attempts are irregular, will they get bounced?"

If it looks like you really didn't intend a metrical poem, commenters will probably say that. Then it will be up to you to decide whether you want the poem moved to the non-met board. If you do, a moderator will move it for you.

If it looks like the poem is, in the main, metrical, readers will let you know whether they like it the way it is or see it as flawed. There'll be a number of different opinions. It's probably wisest to post at Metrical rather than Deep End.


As for free verse that slips into meter, well, look at Eliot. Much free verse can be analyzed metrically in part. Not a problem.

I hope that covers it better.

[Michael Juster]

I'd drop the manifestos and get to work providing some solid critiques of the work here. Do those critiques and then we can see whether you can write a poem.

This opening statement is not very promising. You'll do better if you cut the rhetoric and focus on craft.

[This message has been edited by Michael Juster (edited March 06, 2008).]

[Bran Bronet]

My apologies if anyone's teeth are on edge, but I did begin by apologising for any breaches of forum etiquette.

However, I do have strong opinions about form and content which I believe are of relevance in a poetry forum especially in one such as this where you appear to place a great deal of emphasis on form.

Is it a poem for instance when I produce line after line of garbled random phrases which keep to a strict rhythmical beat? In other words does the mere sound of verse have independently any aesthetic virtue? In my opinion this would preclude thought and sense from poetry. Conversely of course sense without rhythm may not be poetry at all, but prose.

I have one further observation on scansion which is to do with the sounds of words. Not only do the sounds I make when reading aloud appear very different on a recording compared with what I hear in my head, but as we do not know how the Elizabethans for instance spoke in terms of speech patterns etc., how we can then successfully scan their poetry except by making large intelligent leaps in the dark?

Again apologies for any toe crunching.

[Michael Juster]

OK, stop apologizing, stop pontificating. Do, not babble about doing.

[Richard Wakefield]

The big error is in supposing that there is any simple distinction to be made between form and content. If content could be separated from form, the way that groceries can be taken out of a shopping bag, then meter would truly be irrelevant. If you believe the two can be separated, then you're certainly not a metrical poet. My own prejudice is that a person who believes the two can be separated is probably not any kind of a poet, but I realize that's a pretty extreme position.
RPW

[Roger Slater]

I'm with Mike. These questions and preambles are pointless. Rather than make us all work to explain the nature of this site to you in advance, and to give you assurances that you will not be misunderstood, why don't you do what everyone else here did at one time or another, i.e., spend some time reading the poems people post, the type of comments their poems receive, and the general level of critique and work that appears here day after day? You can then decide for yourself whether you're on the same wavelength as the community or whether you belong somewhere else. No one is going to give you a sales pitch.