[Michael Juster]

It's a timely question for me becaue I'm struggling with a longish (for me) blank verse poem--a "low" piece similar in some respects to Ray Pospisil's.

The hard thing is to maintain the lyric intensity of a good short poem and to avoid making the language feel like mere chopped up prose even if it's technically blank verse. When I read longer poems, here or in fancy pants journals, the stretches of slack language are disappointing. It's even harder when you're using "plain speech" and can't use "high" embellishments.

Frost's achievement is so easy to underestimate!

[Bill Carpenter]

Ever read Richard Moore's Empires (1981)? Delightful, taut, varied blank verse dramatic monologues. Never slack. Bill

[John Whitworth]

I never write blank verse for the reason you, Michael, give. Frankly, I think Frost's blank verse is a bit blanker than I might wish. Wallace Stevens is much better in my opinion, and he does it by a gorgeous INFLATION of the language in quite the Jacobean manner.

John Betjeman, on the other hand, succeeds by making a kind of joke of the form. As in:

Evening brought back the gummy smell of toys
And fishy stink of glue and Stickphast paste,
and sleep inside the laundriness of sheets.

Perhaps, though, Betjeman doesn't travel well.

[Maryann Corbett]

I missed Michael C's question above when he asked it, about the relative ease or difficulty of finding homes for blank verse. My sense of it is just the opposite of his.

I've said before, and I still believe, that blank verse has little trouble finding a place in free-verse journals. There are those who argue that free-verse readers are oblivious to the meter of blank verse (see for example the A.E. Stallings interview in VPR). That annoys some formal poets, but it doesn't bug me.

But some magazines that are specifically friendly to formal verse may, I think, be less receptive to unrhymed IP. Do they like it less than rhyme, or are they measuring it against a standard that I haven't learned how to match? It could be either. Or both.

Other unrhymed forms (sapphics, dac hex, alliterative verse) seem to go either way.

Other views?

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Maryann Corbett

Other views?

Maryann,

I really don't know quite what to think. I wonder if sometimes we don't overlay our own concerns onto the field, or see things through lenses we ourselves have tinted. I have the distinct impression (and proof in at least two cases) that editors in certain circumstances don't even notice that a poem is rhymed.

Why does a poem get accepted? It's a complete mystery to me, and, I assume, to others as well. And since we can't figure it out, we invent our own mythologies, hoping the world actually makes sense. Vers Libre editors don't like formal poems? Lots of evidence that's a complete myth. There was once a journal that put out a call for a sapphics issue. When the journal appeared, not a single poem was actually in sapphics.

My point? The world doesn't make sense. And neither do our explanations of it!

Thanks,

Nill

[Julie Steiner]

Sorry, I've been barely checking in here for the past few months and didn't see that this thread had risen from the dead. Oh, ouch, I said some awfully cringe-worthy things! But at least it started a good conversation.

As for my original question, I've actually stopped posting my blank verse for critique here, because I know full well what my problem is--namely, that I just can't shut up. When I write blank verse, I find myself yammering on and on and on, and it takes me years--literally, years--to edit the thing down to something in which every line earns its keep. In contrast, if I write a sonnet, I'm forced to shut the hell up in 14 lines; the volta structure helps me get to the point, too, and of course the rhyme scheme limits what I can say, too. But I currently don't do so well when those training wheels are off. I'll need a lot more practice with shorter stuff like sonnets before I'll have the discipline for really good blank verse.

I did get a long chunk published this year, but the one I'm currently working on won't be ready for a few more years yet, at the rate I edit. Personally, I think editors balk more at the length of blank verse pieces, and perhaps their apparent density on the page, than the meter of them.

Julie the Expert

[Lance Levens]

Julie,

Here's an oddball thought: maybe the difference between blank verse and prose is the presence or absence of the old Anglo Saxon firmato. As long as the poetic line (Frost, Milton) has one or two beats above or below the four beats of Anglo Saxon, you still hear something like it. Blank verse or rhymed verse. With prose the doors open and the groups the stresses fall into become more amorphous. The formal undergirding is gone. On the bad side less discernible form; on the good side, more freedom with the language.

George Saintsbury has a nice line regarding our impulse to categorize: that which is ‘most delightful of all to the true lover of poetry’, ‘the delight of finding out how much it is impossible to account for’:

JuLie, You put your finger on the problem I have with blank verse: I can't shut up. Nonetheless I enjoy it immensely. Judah Benjamin is largely blank verse (90 pp.)--which I break up into stanzas to at least give the ILLUSION that I have some control my logorrhea.

[ChrisGeorge]

Originally Posted by Michael Cantor

Are you on a treasure hunt, Chris? Last week you revived a thread on Betjeman that went back to 2008. Now this from 2005/2003.

If you're going to resurrect old threads, why not indicate you're doing so? Many of us can't remember what we had for breakfast, let alone what we said five years ago, so there's the danger of (a) wasting time by rewriting and restating something you already said in years earlier, or - even worse - putting up a comment that directly contradicts the one you made previously. I am large, I contain multitudes - but I hate to demonstrate it publicly.

Hi Michael

I have been using with greater frequency the "Who's on line" option which frequently leads me to these neglected threads, often being viewed by "Guest" rather than by a member. It has been a pleasure to find a number of worthwhile past discussions that are hidden away. I have been delighted to learn some things I didn't know. You should try it... or maybe you have.

You and Greg are probably correct that the posting member should indicate that they are reviving an old thread, and thanks to you both for pointing that out.

Best regards

Chris