Alison
I couldnt agree with you more. I certainly didn't intend to sugges that I
thought mroe highly of Rich than of Levertov, who was one of my poetic
mentors, especially in _O, Taste and See_, but was intrigued by the way in
which Rich finally achieved open form. As to your comments about being
'interested in all the things that poetry does' . . . . Absolutely...
Doug
>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
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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