Hi Larry,
I think what Alison meant by saying I am not a "prescriptive
neo-formalist" in that I am not interested in making pronouncements on
what poetry in general should do and in condemning non-neo-formal
aesthetics the way the stereotypical neoformalist is.. In fact, I find
a lot of correctly-scanning metrical poetry deadly dull, and
aesthetically, not to mention politically, I have a lot more in common
with many "experimental" poets than I do with most so-called
formalists; my own tastes encompass dada and beat poetry, and various
avant-garde poets (as well as weird victorian poetasters (like
Noyes!)). The difference is that unlike many nowadays, I don't think
the fact that much neoformalism is deadly dull, representational
language makes all meter worthless! And I don't think it means that
correctly-scanning metrical poetry can't be superbly exciting.
I like unusual meters and I like pushing a meter as far as the bounds
of correctness can go---which is exactly why studying prosody and
listening for the outer boundaries beyond which a line is no longer
"in" a certain meter is very important to me. If being attuned to the
rhythmical difference between amphibrachs and anapests is prescriptive,
then I'm proud to be called prescriptive--and, I'm pretty sure that's
not the sense in which Alison meant the word. I like to learn prosody
inside out because I like to explore the "underbelly of prosody," as a
reviewer of my most recent critical book The Body of Poetry put it in a
review I just got in the mail--the more I explore prosody, the more
fabulously bizarre nooks and crannies I find.
So, prescriptive about what makes a line of anapestic tetrameter sound
different from a line of iambic pentameter---I care deeply about these
differences--but not prescriptive about what poetry should do. It's
the difference between saying, waltzes are the only dance worth doing,
and saying, these are the steps of a waltz as I understand them.
yrs respectfully,
AF
___________________________________
Annie Finch, Director
Stonecoast Brief-Residency MFA in Creative Writing
University of Southern Maine
222 Deering St.
Portland, Maine 04104
Phone: 207-780-5973
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://www.anniefinch.com
http://www.usm.maine.edu/stonecoastmfa/
—THE BODY OF POETRY: ESSAYS ON WOMEN, FORM, AND THE POETIC SELF —just
out in the Poets on Poetry series from University of Michigan Press—
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