[MacArthur]

This is a question for Rhina, but anyone else may take a crack at it.

It seems apparent that Formal verse can be written in a style that's...well, conspicuous. That is, even readers who know almost nothing about poetry would know at once that the verse is metrically patterned (and could identify the length and pattern-- trochaic, anapestic, iambic etc.) The rhyme, if present is pretty obvious, and the larger formal pattern (if there is one) can be seen at a glance.
Such poems may be very ingenious and smoothly-written...quite skillful. But no one would have any trouble recognising that they were crafted as traditional poems.

Conversely, many contemporary poems, which scan more or less strictly, and may even use rhyme and forms such as a sonnet or villanelle, either by accident or design, are not conspicuously traditional. A contemporary reader, even after they've had it pointed out to them, might have trouble recognising or accepting the Formal approach employed...even if they enjoyed the poem-- felt it was "tight", rhythmic and authoritative.

The style difference seems to consist of an accumulation of a lot of "small" choices.

My questions (if I've succeeded in making my distinctions clear) are:

1.) Do you consciously employ either, or both, stylistic approaches?

2.) Do you disapprove of either approach?: think the "obvious" is a fault? trivialises the poem? , or the "inconspicuous" is a mannerism? needlessly sacrificing real virtues?

3.) Does it depend?

[This message has been edited by MacArthur (edited August 26, 2001).]

[Tim Murphy]

My verse has been variously described as "Sound-besotted," (Mason) and "Song-like," (Wilbur.) Because I write predominantly in short lines, my rhymes come very close, however adventurous my meters. And I love that density of music in Murphy and my betters (Frost, Yeats, Hardy.) I am very impatient of contemporary poets with considerable formal skill (Heaney, McClatchy) who go to such lengths to disguise their music that the uninitiate cannot hear them. But "it depends." Lovely things can be done with slant rhyme and rather free meters. Stallings is a striking example.

[robert mezey]

It seems to me that however quiet, colloquial, offhand
a poem may be, if it is in rhyme and meter, or even just
meter, more or less strict meter, a reader should pick
up on it just as quickly and easily as with a more formal
style. If not, it's most likely the reader's ignorance
or inexperience. Many of Larkin's poems, for instance,
are as plain-spoken, even slangy, as can be, but you'd
have to be deaf not to hear the metrical verse. And I
don't think that any particular value attaches to one
style or another. Formal diction and tone is not superior
inherently to easy demotic, and vice versa. It depends
on the poet and the intention of the poem. And on theme
and genre. An elegy might require great formality,
although not necessarily. A verse letter, however witty
and well-made, would probably tend toward the conversational; but again, not necessarily.

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

Yes, I agree that "it depends on the poet" and even more so on "the intention of the poem." People forget sometimes that the individual poem does have an "intention," whether it's known to the poet right away or not. that intention maybe wholly unrelated to whatever else the same poet wrote earlier the same day, too, so the POET's intentions are very secondary to those of the poem writing itself through him right now.

I've been reading--and delighting in--your translations from Borges, and thinking how easily he--and therefore you, as a faithful and marvelous translator--switch from formal to colloquial to conversational to philosophic.

As for doing any of that deliberately, either to highlight or disguise your use of form, that sounds more like politics than prosody to me, more like "getting with" some "program" than listening to what the poem is saying in your inner ear. As Borges says in one of his Prefaces, "I don't have any aesthetics."

My own poems tend to be very enjambed, with rather down-played--but generally exact--rhymes that are easy to miss because the "conversation" slides right over them. But that's not because I've made any conscious choices, but rather, I suspect, because I think that way, inside a "box" but busy doing something other than noticing the box I'm in.
And of course, reading acres of Frost has probably had a lot to do with it. I like what he says about the "sound of sense," the tension because the what and the how. I can think of poems I love that work precisely because you notice the box--Tim Murphy's, for instance--and the dance being done in it so small and precise.

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

I meant, of course, "the tension BETWEEN the what and the how." Excuse the typos, please, everybody. I wanted to say, also, that I think the poem suffers when the box disappears or is treated without respect, but also when the box becomes an end in itself.