[Nick McRae]

A number of months back I picked up a copy of A Poet's Glossary by Edward Hirsch, which offers a comprehensive look at pretty much everything related to poetry (I highly recommend picking it up).

The title has got me thinking about schools and styles of poetry in a way I haven't before, and I thought that'd make for an interesting discussion point. I'll jump right in and provide a few leading questions:

- do any particular schools of poetry resonate with you?
- do you consider your poetry to belong to a specific school or style?

I would say that symbolism is the school that resonates with me the most. From Hirsch's title:

They craved a poetry of suggestion rather than direct statement and treated everything in the external world as a condition of soul. They sought to repress or obfuscate one kind of reality, the quotidian world, in order to attain a more permanent reality, a world of ideal forms and essences. They believed that a magical suggestiveness could best be achieved by synaesthesia, fusing images and senses, and bringing poetry as close as possible to music.

I'd never studied symbolism too closely, but the above feels like it aligns with what I'm trying to do for the most part.