Alison wrote:
> Doug wrote:
>
>> Michael Snider mentioned a number of poets who moved, so to speak, from
>> metrical verse to freer forms. An especially interestng case is
>> Adrienne
>> Rich, as in her case it was definitely 'politics' (if what are often
>> called
>> personal politics) that moved her out. She could not write what was in
>> ehr
>> to write within the confines of metrical verse. As someone who found
>> my way
>> early to open or organic form in such writers as those found in The New
>> American Poetry, I always found it interesting to put her beside
>> Levertov,
>> who came, as I see it, to organic form through a formal recognition
>> early,
>> while Rich, it seems to me, started formally within the metric
>> tradition
>> but had no choice given her life choices (& here Creeley's 'form is
>> never
>> more than an extension of content' seems to be in force) but to move
>> into
>> 'free verse' or whatever 'we' end up calling it...
>
> Funny - I was reading Levertov last night. I always read her with
> admiration and enjoyment, but I find Rich less rewarding: initially
> impressive, but it starts to fall away for me on re-reading. I think in
> part the ideology gets in the way. Lervetov has a tougher line, maybe a
> psyche less inclined to sentiment, which is, yes, profoundly formal
>
It's always seemed that way to me, too, Alison. In fact, I don't think
it was Rich's "life choices" which led her to abandon metrical verse but
an ideology which, I think mistakenly, identifies metrical verse with
patriarchal and otherwise oppressive politics. That the ideology drove
the poems is clearest in "The 9th Symphony of Beethoven Understood as a
Sexual Message at Last." And Levertov is one of the great treasures of
our poetry.
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