Continuing my soliloquy:
Tom said:I think the problem with elevating a form at the expense of all other possible aspects of a poem--like, fer instance, the content--is that it turns the form into a recipe. And all too often, when this has become the case, it feels like the resulting poem was written by a particularly tyrannical cook...
I agree entirely. But good use of traditional form is simply as natural as syntax. It happens rather than is contrived.
All poems/objects/sounds are forms.
I think Adelaide Crapsey missed the point. A haiku "happens" to a Japanese Haiku writer. Never to a non-Japanese. Her alleged substitute was a half-realisation of that fact. A miss is as good as a mile. There are plenty of succinct English poems and always have been.
Janet
|