Yes, good points--and someone mentioned Marilyn Hacker, whose _Presentation
Piece_ was very important to me at a formative stage in the '70s.
Also wanted to recommend the excellent work on prosody and New Formalist
criticism of Arthur Mortensen at _EP&M Online_
(http://www.n2hos.com/acm/contents.html). The current issue has a very smart
review of Gioia's _Interrogations at Noon_ by Mortensen, as well as a
wonderful series of "classic reprints"--from the "ghastly" (William Cullen
Bryant's "Aged Pastor") to the "cheap tricks" kind exemplified by Lewis
Carroll's "Acrostic, Are You Deaf...," which is hailed by Mortensen as a
healthy reminder that cleverness has its place in poetry. (About Donne's
"Too His Mistress...," reproduced as a true classic, he says we should all
have such pastors!) What really blew me away in all these features is how
(lightly, gracefully) instructive Mortensen's observations on all things
formal is--a very smart and witty writer who really knows his stuff. I'm
going back when I have more time to pursue his ongoing lessons via a feature
he calls "Freeware Prosody" and for which he keeps adding links on metrics,
measures, and so forth.
Candice
on 7/9/01 11:02 AM, Douglas Barbour at [log in to unmask] 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...
>
> Doug
>
> Douglas Barbour
> Department of English
> University of Alberta
> Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
> (h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
>
> Beauty's whatever
> makes the adrenalin run.
>
> John Newlove
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