RIP Lewis Turco
 

I saw a FB post announcing that Lewis Turco had died, and I've found an obituary. Many of you will know his Book of Forms. I'm grateful to Lew for inventing the terzanelle, a favorite form of mine.

Oh, what a shame.

I didn't know he invented the terzanelle. He used a terzanelle of mine in the (I think) most recent edition, though it really wasn't very good. (I'm not just being modest here. I didn't care for it at all, but he saw it at the Sphere and asked for it so I couldn't bring myself to say no).

I remember him most for cranky diatribes about free verse not being poetry, etc., but somehow I liked him. May he rest in peace.

I never met him, but I would have liked to. He did formal poetry a service with his Book of Forms. I am sorry to hear that he has died.

Susan

I'm very sorry to hear this news. I bought his Book of Forms and he instantly became my hero for having written it!
I didn't know him, but I would have liked to meet him, very much so.

Jayne

Aww. I only had a few minor interactions with him here at the 'Sphere, but his Book of Forms is quite literally always within arm's reach of my computer. I even cited it in my dissertation (specifically his comments on stanza breaks). He's left a good legacy.

..and that "Wesli Court" fellow who wrote his poems!

I'm very sorry to hear it. We corresponded on & off for several years after I reviewed his book The Gathering of Elders for Italian Americana in 2011. In the aftermath he was grateful and very generous with unsolicited tips on publication, copies of his own books, and more. On Facebook he was funny, punny, kind, and infuriating--yet charmingly so. It was as if he couldn't help saying exactly what he thought, no matter the subject or occasion--it was just who he was. In his blog he was the same way. As Wesli or Lew, he wrote some very fine poems, and we can all be grateful for his Book of Forms in many editions.

If you'd like to know him better, here's the link to his blog. You'll find a flood of light verse & in the "Categories" many entries to explore.
https://lewisturco.typepad.com/poetics/

I'm very sad to hear this. Wes Hyatt, a writing friend of mine, had attended the same high school class with Lew at Meriden High in Connecticut. I once emailed Lew a terzanelle I had written. He was nice for giving me some great feedback on the poem and helping me enhance it.

We went back to Bread Loaf in 1968, where he was my faculty reader. I also introduced him to Eratosphere, where he proved so contentious that no conversation with him went anywhere. The Book of Forms has been useful to many poets, and it did help to keep the formal flame alive during some lean years.

Sad news. I did meet him at a conference, maybe West Chester.

I like that terzanelle form.

RIP Lewis Turco
 

He may have been out of the spotlight for a while, but the loss of Lewis Turco is still a loss for formal poetry. He had forgotten more about form and meter than most of us will ever learn. Since 2012, I have kept his Book of Forms as close as any thesaurus or other reference, and it has traveled with me to many conferences.

I only met Lewis once, at West Chester in 2013. After we were introduced (I forget by whom), we had a short discussion about the terzanelle form he had invented by merging the terza rima and villanelle forms. I asked him if he had intended the terzanelle to be a "closed" form; i.e., limited to 19 lines. He responded that he thought of it as a closed form. I then told him that I had written a terzanelle, but it had an extra tercet, so it was 22 lines. Was that ok? He said "that's fine" and made it clear that he had no problem with doing that. That was the extent of the conversation, but for me it served as an example of Lewis' receptiveness to experimentation with forms. He was not the strict, hide-bound formalist he is sometimes presented as. The terzanelle was, after all, one of his many inventions.

I haven't had any contact with Lewis since that one in 2013, but I still feel I owe him a lot as a writer of formal poetry. RIP indeed.

Lew wrote free verse, but he strongly disliked the term, arguing that "verse" by definition was metrical and thus could not be "free." I don't have a copy of The Book of Forms handy, so someone can check what he had to say about it in the later editions. I do know that he discussed, at some point, Hebrew prosody as based on anaphora and other types of repetition, but that doesn't say anything about the length of the lines. To say that Whitman used a prosody based on repetition doesn't say anything about the lines themselves, which can range across the page and more. I may be wrong, but I think Lew argued that free verse was simply prose broken into lines; however, the breaking of groups of words (phrases, sentences) would seem to indicate a type of verse (the old notion of the turn of the plow at the end of the furrow). Thoughts?

RIP Lewis Turco
 

Sam, your memory is pretty good. On p. 224 of The Book of Forms: Revised and Expanded Edition (2012), Lewis wrote this:

Free verse is lineated prose, for if 'verse' is defined as 'metered language' and 'prose' as 'unmetered language,' then the term 'free verse' is a contradiction in terms because 'verse' cannot be 'free,' for it is 'metered.' The only other possibility, then, is that 'free verse' is prose broken into lines, 'lineated' by some means or other . . . .

If you try to look up "free verse" in the General Index of the same edition, you are told to "See prose."

However, we needn't interpret any of this to mean that free verse is somehow not a legitimate style of poetry; merely that the term itself is a misnomer. It might be more appropriate to call such poetry "free of verse."

Also, throughout the book there are a number of exemplary poems by some guy named R. S. Gwynn. Perhaps you know him?

Nice to hear from you again.

Ted

I agree with Sam: "the breaking of groups of words (phrases, sentences) would seem to indicate a type of verse."

Ted, thanks for reminding us of Lew's terminology. I was too lazy to look it up! He really knew how to spark debate.

Even so, the question of whether free verse is poetry or prose seems like kind of a dead end--to me, anyway. It risks defining poetry by a single aspect: how lines are determined, broken, or enjambed. All the sonics that matter in poetry--as well as its crucial foundation in syntax, pacing, and aural density--are given short shrift. Should we call it "free" verse? "Non-metrical" verse? Who knows? I'll let others sort it out! :-) I'll just keep writing--and, especially, reading--both.

For a more informed perspective than mine, check out Ellen Bryant Voigt's The Art of Syntax: Rhythm of Thought, Rhythm of Song.

Ted, I did know him, but we hadn't spoken in some years because of this free verse/prose argument, about which Lew could be doctrinaire and unyielding. My point was that free verse was lineated and that prose wasn't; a piece of prose in a newspaper is chopped into 30-space lines; the same piece reprinted in a book may appear in 60+ space lines. Prose in print is usually righthand-justified. None of these changes affects its status as prose.

When we see a passage of verse inserted into a prose sentence, its line breaks are indicated by the / (virgule). If the quote is longer than a couple of lines it is indented and printed as it originally appeared. If the lines are measured in some pattern, it's metrical verse; if they're not, it's free.