John Bennett writes:
>
Exercising the craft of poetry for
students or workshops, or ones own satisfaction is connected but not the
same as creating a poem for the poem's sake and for the sake of thinking
through that poem.
>
I agree, but I remain unconvinced by the automatic equation (in Chris's
original post) of form with technical exercises. One of the reviewers of my
first book was misled by a note of acknowledgement I wrote thanking a
workshop I belonged to into thinking some of the poems were composed as
exercises for a tutor. (The usual reviewer's vice of reviewing everything in
the book but the poems.) After all I'd included a villanelle and a sestina,
and no one would ever write such flashy forms for real, would they? I think
what's going on here is a rather facile assumption that poems have an
external, inorganic, artificial form (bad) and a internal, organic, natural
content (good). Unless the content or message can in some way be shown to
have mastered and reshaped the form, the poem is insincere, a product of
artifice. Whereas I would argue that form (and I don't necessarily mean
traditional form but any one of a vast number of verbal strategies that can
affect the shape of the poem) is valuable precisely because it does sabotage
any predetermined content. I would actually rather premeditate form than
premeditate content, because at least that way what I have to say will
surprise me.
Best wishes
Matthew Francis
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Glamorgan
Pontypridd
CF37 1DL
UK
[mailto:[log in to unmask]
01443 482856
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