A. E. Stallings on Formal Poetry

[HowardM2]

"Crooked Roads Without Improvement: Some Thoughts on Formal Verse" (http://gazebo.alsopreview.com/aside/aesthoughts.html).

[Harry R]

Ooh, spooky synchronicity. I was reading this earlier today.

As I never held any of the opinions she's disputing, I found it a bit tedious, but hey-ho.

Here's my thoughts on formal verse instead.

So many of the formal poems posted on the internet bore me. Of course, the majority of poems of all types posted are boring, but often even the people who are most accomplished in the technicalities of formal verse write stuff that bores me rigid.

So here's my theory. When I write free verse, I feel I always have hanging over my head the accusation 'prose with linebreaks!'. Now there are a number of different strategies for making sure that free verse is distinct from prose - Whitman, WCW, cummings and Eliot all found different ones, for example - but when I'm writing a poem, I always feel that, if challenged, I should be able to point to qualities in the language used that are intended to make it different from prose.

Too often, I think that bad formal poets fall back on the comforting thought that their poem is clearly and unmistakeably a poem because it has metre and rhyme. Because the accusation 'this is just rhyming, metrical prose' is not generally made, there's not the same pressure to make the language do something different. The really good formal poets, on the other hand, treat metre and rhyme as a given, and make the language dance as well.

One of these days I'm going to have the patience to type out the long poem Backwaters: Norfolk Fields by George Szirtes. In the meantime, that Don Paterson thread is a good start.

Harry

[Steph#2]

On a scale of 0 to 10, if metrical verse is ‘0’ and prose is ‘10’, I would place free verse at 0.5. I can not believe this debate still goes on. Free verse is still verse for heaven’s sake. It is The Line which creates rhythm, pacing, enjambement, sonic patterns etc., etc., in free verse as much as it does in metrical verse. It’s why I object to the term, non-metrical, over at the other place; it’s like saying Jazz is non-musical because it syncopates the rhythm.

Perhaps if we had labels which we could use to define what sort of poem a free verse poem is then all this hot air management could be avoided. Geez, the stuff comes in pretty predictable shapes and sizes anyway. If we were then able to eradicate all the names we have for the various metrical forms we’d all be in clover.

Prof. Steph#2

[Harry R]

Originally posted by Steph#2
It’s why I object to the term, non-metrical, over at the other place; it’s like saying Jazz is non-musical because it syncopates the rhythm.

It's all a bit angels on pinheads, but actually I prefer 'non-metrical' because it's an accurate, literal technical term, whereas the term 'free verse' carries all sorts of historical and connotational baggage.

Harry

[Steph#2]

Yes, but...

why define something by what it isn’t?

Steph#2

[Harry R]

Originally posted by Steph#2
Yes, but...

why define something by what it isn’t?

Steph#2

Well, you want to describe the category of poems which aren't written with metre. So whether the term you use to describe them explicitly makes reference to that fact or not, it *is* a category defined by what it isn't.

In fact, your description of free verse as a '0.5' on a scale where metrical poetry = 0 and prose = 10 strikes me as far more of an insult to free verse than calling it 'non-metrical' becaus it implies that metre is the platonic ideal and free verse just a very good imitation. Bad metrical poetry strikes me as often being far closer to prose than good non-metrical poetry is.

Harry

[Harry R]

How about 'unmetered' as an alternative to 'non-metrical'?

Harry