Is conceptual poetry formal?
 

Formal poetry, as a craft, requires the use of a scheme to create a work, usually one long accepted or a recognizable variation on one of those "traditional" schemes (as most of those long accepted schemes, such as the Shakesperian sonnet, once were themselves).

Does this mean that conceptual poems are also formal? They require the poet to follow a scheme. That scheme is critical to the effect of the poem (indeed, in the pure conceptualism discussed here, the scheme is more important than the poem itself). And that scheme is repeatable by others to different effects, which may be the scheme's most necessary formal quality.

Don't be disappointed if this debate doesn't take off like a house afire. But you never know--it's August and that's a month when persistent heat or even ennui can self-combust and lead to amazing conflagration.

Conceptual poetry has been discussed in this forum to the pit of fatigue. This is only a partial list of the threads. I remember others which can likely be turned up by doing a search for representative key names.


Poetry (July/August) & Flarf debate
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=7974&highlight=conceptual 6 pages

Your shopping lists might be publishable
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=14704&highlight=conceptual 7 pages

Keith Waldrop and Experimental Poetry
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=9398&highlight=flarf 3

Conceptual literature redux
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=17576&highlight=conceptual 2 pages

The logical next step
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=20596&highlight=conceptual 3

forum for poems/fiction that suck
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=8277&highlight=flarf 3 pages

The answer is actually pretty simple. The term "formal" when applied to poetry is a term of art that simply means metrical (often but not always in rhyme, and often but not always following a traditional form). It is not the opposite of "casual"; to say that free verse or conceptual verse is not "formal" verse is not to say that it is loose, poorly thought out, unanchored, amorphous, casual, or unserious. It is just to say that it is not metrical.

good question but done to death like ptd out. going by oed, formal is an adjective which means

having a conventionally recognized form, structure, or set of rules

now conceptual poetry has been hyped so much it is the new convention. it's like a serious polite swordfight w/ sticks. this stand off. everyone plays their parts. the formals sneering at the not so new brigade and the not so new brigade responding w/ awful invocations of the avant garde .

so the answer is a clear yes/no. a massproducd yes/no

What is conceptual poetry? I've never heard of it. Should I have? Come on, Michael.I know you are a fount of wisdom. In simple words of not much more than one syllable. My ear is open like a hungry shark.

Ask Walter, John. He straddles the divide with grace.

Or read all those links Janice provided. Or just ignore the entire discussion. Believe me, your life will not be any the worse for it.

"Is conceptual poetry formal?"

Yes, I think it is, very much so.
And I enjoy that aspect of it very much.

Nemo

h but Michael it might be. If Walter's poems are conceptual then I like it. Is 'The Hunting of the Snark' conceptual?