[Richard Wakefield]

I'm with David in having reservations about generalizing. When I like a poem it often feels to me as if my explanation for liking it is pretty much post hoc, principles I've cobbled together to give my taste some more or less tangible basis. Same with poems I don't like, except that then I feel much less need to explain my reaction.
There ARE principles, but they emerge from practice over time. The practice isn't a matter of trying to fill out some Platonic template or ideal. But at some level we begin to generalize from our reactions because that's one of the things human brain do: lungs exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen, kidneys filter the blood, brains generalize (and discriminate, too!). So there is satisfaction in criticism that seeks to generalize, and it can be intense satisfaction, although always a distant second to that of writing or reading a good poem.
Although I'm a pretty committed writer of formal verse, I wonder if formal versus free might be a useless way to divide poetry. You know, it took us thousands of years to figure out that skin color is a crappy basis for generalizing about human beings; maybe it won't take that long to come to a similar understanding about poetry, something vastly less important.
RPW

[nyctom]

You know Curtis, I like what you said about the lines in formal poetry not being, so to speak, real "verse"--that is, they don't turn the poem, but merely exist as a nod to the form(at) of the poem, eg. "it's iambic pentameter so I need to end the line after the fifth stress." I've pretty much completely abandoned writing in form that would be considered "metrical," per se, but I do remember something Elizabeth Bishop said in an interview before she died. She was teaching at Harvard, and complaining about her students, to wit: (and this is a paraphrase) "you can't even scan their free verse!" Rhythm--whether codified into a metric or "free"--still has to have some kind of regularity, doncha think, something that is "scan-able" (as in the sense of discerning a rhythm, a regularity of sound)?

I did not attend West Chester and there is no published record of McClatchy's remarks on Hecht (if you find them feel free to post them), but I don't think McClatchy was pointing an accusatory finger at any particular poet(s). Rather, the passage I quoted seemed to be quite specific in its reservations. Again, it is a generalization, but in this case I thought it was a particularly useful one, warning about the limitations of reducing poetry to a "single-issue," whether that be post-structuralist language theory, jazz-inflections and rhythms, identity (whether racial, gender, or sexual orientation), or metrics. It didn't seem to me that McClatchy was singling out "new formalism," but rather pointing to the problems of reductionary thinking. Or theorizing.

[Kevin Andrew Murphy]

Movements have different uses. To academics, they're something to categorize and write papers about. To writers, they're ways to self-identify, put feathers in your cap, and identify yourself to other people doing the same sort of thing. To publishers, they're a marketing gimick, to be ruthlessly flogged until the horse dies a speedy death, with the resulting carcass shunned (until it's time to mount a revival).

I've been identified as a Splatterpunk, a Mannerpunk, a New Trollope and likely several other things which really don't matter.

New Formalism isn't so much new as it's just the cool (or dorky) name the kids who like rhyming verse are calling themselves this week (who aren't calling themselves Rappers, that is). If it lets us sell more poems, cool, and if not, ditch it.

[Paul Lake]

While I share feelings similar to Dave Mason's, there may be another dynamic at work in McClatchy's comment. Like Dave, I've never felt entirely comfortable with the dorky New Formalist label. I was writing formal poems long before the term was coined and I'd ever met, spoken to, or written to another formal poet of my generation. I also sometimes write free verse haunted by various types of meter or written hybrid poems that employ various degrees of free and formal verse.

The other dynamic that might be at play is this: That McClatchy wants to claim meter and form for himself while simultaneaously distancing himself from New Formalism, which is often attacked for political reasons as somehow being inherently politically reactionary. Claiming to like form but not New Formalism may be analogous to saying, "But some of my best friends write formal poems."

[nyctom]

Of course there are any number of problems with McClatchy's assertions: even so short a passage is riddled with enormous generalizations (all people writing in traditional forms and/or meters are ipso facto new formalists); he doesn't qualify his terms (traditional values, rigor, inaccurate lines); his accusations are somewhat vague (what are "their aims" and why are they "narrow"? compared to what?). But he raises some really interesting points about the problems of "schools" and "labels."

Labels are indeed often used as a selling point, so to speak. But not everyone looks at poetry as a "salable commodity." Although the numbers of people seeking to publish their poems has exploded, it still does not mean everyone who writes poetry is looking to publish. Hard to believe, I realize, but there it is.

Another issue might be called a variant of "where there's smoke, there's fire": I have never read once of l-a-n-g-u-a-g-e poetry or confessional poetry or GLBT-identified poetry or the like associated with conservative political viewpoints or agendas. But the "New Formalism=Political Conservativism" equation is consistently associated with the idea of metrical poetry as a "movement." I am not questioning the validity of that assumption. But I DO wonder why that assumption is made so often, so consistently.

Finally, a large part of the labeling problem may be self-perpetuating. For example: also posted recently is a notice that The Dictionary of Literary Biography has now published a separate volume on New Formalism and poets who self-identify as "new formalists." There are a number of websites specifically identifying themselves as New Formalist or Expansive. This website itself segregates metrical and non-metrical poems into different workshops. I have seen on several websites people boasting proudly of "OUR" poet (who is always someone working in traditional form or meter) who did so and so (with the implication, I guess, that everyone who isn't one of "OUR" poets is one of "THEM").

That labeling and segregating is being done by whom?



[This message has been edited by nyctom (edited June 26, 2003).]

[Paul Lake]

Tom, to answer your following question--

"Another issue might be called a variant of "where there's smoke, there's fire": I have never read once of l-a-n-g-u-a-g-e poetry or confessional poetry or GLBT-identified poetry or the like associated with conservative political viewpoints or agendas. But the "New Formalism=Political Conservativism" equation is consistently associated with the idea of metrical poetry as a "movement." I am not questioning the validity of that assumption. But I DO wonder why that assumption is made so often, so consistently."

--Generally, so-called Language Poetry is identified--and self-identified--with the political left. New Formalists have made no such claim about being politically conservative, since many, such as Charles Marting, are self-described liberals. Labelling New Formalism as rightwing was simply a method used to demonize the group by free versers who felt threatened by the upstart movement.

[Roger Slater]

Paul, I agree with your general point. I am another example of a self-described liberal who loves formal poetry, and I'm sure there are many others like me. (Calvin Trillin writes some pretty funny metrical ditties for The Nation, for example).

But isn't there at least a germ of truth, overall, in the association of formalism with political conservatism? Magazines like Edge City and the New Criterion, for example, couple formal poetry with right-leaning editorial content. And the conservatives certainly seem to outnumber the liberals here at Erato. Perhaps it's not surprising that conservatives are more comfortable aligning themselves with tradition?

Anyway, I think those who dismiss formalism because they perceive it as a conservative activity, or because they believe that the very act of writing in meter is somehow associated with an outdated way of viewing the world, or that it is associated with a white Christian patriarchy, are full of shit.

[Paul Lake]

Roger, there probably is some sort of connection between the conservation of language, poetic forms and traditions and a mild degree of political conservatism in this otherwise frenetically modern society. That might account for journals like The New Criterion and Edge City review. But overall, I'd say the vast majority of formalists are like most educated Americans, politically grouped in the center-left of the political spectrum. Erato's relatively high percentage of politically conservative formalists is an aberration. Oddly, by contrast, not only is metrical poet Calvin Trillin over at The Nation, but its poetry editor, Grace Schulman, is a sometimes formalist too. My own first widely read essay was "Toward a Liberal Poetics." Over the last decade or so, I've been pushed in a more conservative direction by the extremity of the cultural left. Positions once defined as liberal, like equal rights before the law regardless of race or sex, are now considered not only conservative, but are demonized as racist and sexist. The politically correct position is now to legally favor some selected groups over others. Liberal means, according to Webster, favoring freedom to choose. Political correctness has made so-called liberals less liberal.

To speak for a moment on behalf of McClatchy, he has, as Tim Murphy just reminded me, published formal poets like Tim Steele, A. E. Stallings, and Greg Williamson. Me too, once, some time ago.

[nyctom]

Paul:

I suppose in a similar way, there are those of us who have been pushed in a more liberal/radical direction by rightwing, Christian, and Republican politicians. For example, the Supreme Court's decriminalization of sodomy by adults in the privacy of their homes elicited an opinion by all three dissenting Justices--Renquist, Scalia and Thomas--that the Court, in overturning the previous Bowers decision, declared the Court was advocating for the "homosexual agenda." (Are there copies of this agenda available for reading? I would be curious to see exactly what this agenda consists of.)

Perhaps it is because Republican lawmakers have decreed that homosexuals are advocating for "special rights"--like the right to marry or to adopt children. Here's a situation. My uncle was gay. He had a lover--since he could not legally marry--for thirty-three years. When my uncle was taken to the hospital because he could not breathe, his lover had to wait for information from my father, because he was not a member of my uncle's "immediate family." For him to dare advocate the right to be allowed to make medical decisions for his husband (or lover if you so prefer--the nomenclature is so difficult these days, isn't it?) of thirty-three years would be considered one of those "special rights" the GLBT (gay/lesbian/bisexual/transexual) community are agitating for.

I have used the example of "special rights" for the GLBT commnunity because I am personally acquainted--and affected--by political decisions such as the Lawrence decision. My boyfriend, on the other hand, is a die-hard conservative Republican (he's lucky he's so cute, that's all I can say). He is a bigtime Hilary Clinton-basher, for example, but was cheering the Lawrence decision as well. Look, for example (if you must--lol) at the Log Cabin Republicans. I am raising all of this simply to point out that "political correctness" may, like the ideas of "liberal," "radical," and "conservative" be much more complex and nuancedthan simple either/or thinking makes them out to be.

I suppose this is all a roundabout way of agreeing that generalizations are extremely limited in their usefulness. What I found surprising was how ardently some people go to defend them. In this case, it would be actions that segregate formal from free verse, or asserting that one is ispo facto better than the other. If you think about art forms that were invented and/or primarily developed in the West during the late 19th and early 20th centuries--jazz, modern dance, atonal music, nonrepresentational painting and sculpture, performance art, theater of the absurd, flash fiction, and the like--ALL of them take aspects of traditional arts into account for their own particular aesthetic approach.

I thought Matisse was rather interesting. When he taught students art, he didn't teach them fauvist color theories or cubist "perspective," he taught them line drawing and anatomy and perspective and basic color theory--the same theory that art academies and studios had taught for hundreds of years. When one of his students complained all of this was "old hat" and were they ever going to get to the "interesting" (ie modern) stuff, he was scandalized. You need a foundation in the traditions, he told them, before you can even understand what modern/contemporary artists are tying to do, let alone creating art along modern lines.

I found McClatchy's assertion interesting because it doesn't advocate a particular political position. He doesn't say, new formalism is garbage because its practioners are backward-looking conservative ninnies hoping to turn back the clock to some proverbial Eden that never really existed to begin with, or that l-a-n-g-u-a-g-e poets are misguided because they are reducing poetry to a narrow set of liberal/radical political theories. To me, that passage is a clearing away, an attempt to disentangle poetry from the ideological and political deritrus it has accumulated over time.

[Paul Lake]

Dear Tom,

Well, as you note, there were only 3 dissenters in the sodomy case and the law was struck down. Liberals have little to fear from the ever-shrinking number of cultural conservatives or the increasingly small amount of influence the religious right has over all of our institutions. What's on the increase is political correctness, which the same allegedly conservative court has just made the law of the land. Despite the equal protection clause of the constitution and the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawing discrimination based on race, O'Connor has just made group rights, an official racial hierarchy, and "diversity" the law of the land.

As to poetry, I still maintain my original thesis in "Toward a Liberal Poetics." As Matisse suggested, we have to ground poetry in the traditional fundamentals; then genuine artists who've mastered their craft can exercise the greatest freedom in creating art, liberally choosing whatever techniques suit them.

By the way, if you haven't already read it, you MUST read Charles Martin's marvellous poem "How My Queer Uncle Came to Die at Last." It was published a while back in the Hudson and appears now in his selected poems *Starting from Sleep.* I promise you will love it.