Bill,

I think Jim was referring to my off-handed comment that you quoted.

Greg

*D'oh!*

Must have 10 characters...

Yes, Greg's right -- I was feeling glib and played with his off-handed comment in #20, 'if you put a gun to my head'. It backfired. I was hoping it would be disarmingly cute. (The mood these days in our world sits on a hair-trigger, I'm afraid).

Perhaps I shouldn't have stretched the definition of 'metrical' as I did. Of course I realize metrical poetry refers to the adherence to established forms of poetry that is composed with stressed and unstressed syllables in recognizable and repeated patterns.Maybe it's better expressed by calling it classical metric. I don't know. I'm just learning.

Jim, the best thing you can be is "teachable".

I plan to remain teachable until my last breath. Heaven forbid there should come a time when someone can't teach me something.

My hat is off to anyone among us who is beyond being taught something.

Is there anyone like that here?

Nope.

I have it on good authority that James Dickey started his poetry classes by having his students write ballads. One thing about verse-writing, it can be taught, and it can be learned. Reading poetry can be taught as well, and it also can be learned. Williams embarrassed himself into learning how to write poetry.

Before I joined my first online workshop, I didn't know how to read poetry, and was only slightly okay at writing it (time will tell if I've improved any). The best thing that happened over the years is I learned how to read poetry. When I was on my own I missed 80% of what I was reading, because I was in love with words and language and sound. Meaning took a back seat. That is no longer true, but I can still catch myself reading without paying much attention: a habit I find hard to break.

Before this thread dies I do want to search my book of WCW's early poems to find a traditional piece that isn't a clunker. He did pen a few.

I wonder if many here have read Allen Ginsberg's first blights? He wrote in a very old style, and in tight forms. Some of his formal poetry wasn't bad, but most of it was pretty overbearing.

If anyone happens to stumble across a sequence of hymns I wrote, they will no doubt want to choke me. I am in a slow process of revising them.

AG's father, Louis, was a traditional poet in the Poetry Society mode. I've seen a few things here and there. Is Allen's early work available online? His first teacher was Mark Van Doren, who was very traditional, and I've heard that AG's early Columbia poetry was in the metaphysical style. I guess I can look it up.

https://scarriet.wordpress.com/category/louis-ginsberg/

(Added in: no luck finding AG's student poems online)

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Enough about those #%&!? chickens !! HERE!

I have Ginsberg's Collected Poems 1947-1980. In the notes section it says that in his college days Ginsberg wrote "imitations of Marlowe, Marvell, and Donne (and Hart Crane)". I searched for the first poem on offer, and it seems to be in at least three places.

Here's the poem:

A Modest Proposal

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will some old pleasures prove.
Men like me have paid in verse
This costly courtesy, or curse;

But I would bargain with my art
(As to the mind, now to the heart),
My symbols, images, and signs
Please me more outside these lines.

For your share and recompense,
You will be taught another sense:
The wisdom of the subtle worm
Will turn most perfect in your form.

Not that your soul need tutored be
By intellectual decree,
But graces that the mind can share
Will make you, as more wise, more fair,

Till all the world's devoted thought
Find all in you it ever sought,
And even I, of skeptic mind,
A Resurrection of a kind.

This compliment, in my own way,
For what I would receive, I pay;
Thus all the wise have writ thereof,
And all the fair have been their love.

- A.G. 1947

The page I copied from is this one.

The author of the blog made two typos, which I've fixed. But that's not the funny thing. Look at her name. It's Kristina. Where's my tinfoil hat!

There are only 4 poems from Ginsberg's college days. The second one is an imitation of Marvell, the third looks and sounds like Donne and Cowley, and the fourth is a long poem in very archaic octaves.

I've typed out the first stanza from the second poem, which looks & sounds (sort of) like Donne and Cowley:

xxxxLet not the sad perplexity
xxxxOf absent love unhumor thee:
xxSighs, tears, and oaths, and laughter I have spent
To make my play with thee resolve in merriment;
xxxxFor wisest critics past agree
xxxxThe truest love is comedy.
Will thou not weary of the tragic argument?

Your term is good. My own term, an acronym, is maybe more positive: LBOW.

That is, an LBOW is a Long Bit of Writing. LBOWs include Pound's Cantos, Homer, Dante, Chaucer, and Howl, besides efforts by WCW.

Williams' "Plums" is a SPOW (Short Piece of Writing), that is, a largely metrics-free item, which, in the case of the Plums, I like. SPOWs are the order of this epoch, and most are hopelessly forgettable. Most modern LBOWs are too.