[Julie Steiner]

Here's a link to yesterday's video conversation with Timothy Green of Rattle, which I've cued to start after the throat-clearing preliminaries:
A.E. Stallings | Rattlecast #82

If you'd like to skip the poem readings and go to a discussion of attitudes toward free vs. formal verse, and of memorization as a way of becoming a better formalist in your own work, click here instead. I thought Tim had an interesting comment that "So much of the poetry world exists as pedagogy, so that what goes on in teaching ends up informing a lot of the way we're writing"--and since poor rhyming is so obvious, instructors tend to regard rhyme as a pitfall to steer students away from. Alicia's basic rhyming rules for beginners were nicely articulated, I thought.

I also liked her thoughts on approaching poetry from a place of pleasure and wonder, and that "wonder doesn't have to understand," while classroom instruction tends to be more focused on understanding.

As a subscriber who had already read Alicia's and Tim's interview in the Winter issue of Rattle, I appreciated that Tim deliberately took this conversation in a different direction from the topics covered there.

For those too new to remember, A.E. Stallings was a moderator here, years ago, so I think it's appropriate to post this here.