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.
I can't understand why anyone interested in poetry wouldn't be interested
in all the things that poetry does, just out of curiosity and for the
sheer pleasure of it - certainly, way back when I was a child, the first
poem I remember consciously writing was a sonnet, which I made after
reading an anatomy of the Shakespearean sonnet in some children's
magazine. I've always written using a mixture of formal elements,
depending what the poems themselves seem to demand. For the most part I
use free verse, mainly because it's more difficult, and so more
satisfying. The main use of traditional form in contemporary poetry
seems to me to provide models to _break_...
Best
Alison
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