Quote:
Originally Posted by Roger Slater
But why would the poet want to exercise that option? In my view, it's for reasons that ultimately have nothing to do with the satisfaction to be derived by his readers. It's a personal thing.
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Certainly, it's a personal thing, but it's an entirely legitimate aim. I absolutely have specific things to say in poems. Workshopping at its best recognizes that the poet may be doing things that detract from the main aim, or that there may be more than one emotion coming through and that the combination may not be effective. Good critique can help the poem make the decisions it needs. But the critic should respect that there
is an original impulse that can't just be tossed without loss of desire to write the poem in the first place.
I can't call up the exact wording of the famous quotation about poems being devices for recreating in the reader a specific
feeling, but that's the definition I endorse. I think we have to assume that there is a sensation the poet wants to recreate in the reader by means of the words. At least in that sense, the poem
does begin in ideas.
To return to the original question about form, I do sometimes start with a specific form in mind. Sometimes it works; sometimes it's a mistake. If I start with blank verse, I can turn it to form or to free verse later, but I can't go the other way. This is just the way my head works (or fails to!).