sorry to offend, Mark. There are so many centers to poetry, even within
each country, and certainly generational and other issues play into how
people see things changing. I am too new to the list to be posting so
much and apologize.
I only wish most younger poets had your depth of background in formal
verse! It is extremely extremely rare. My sense of it has less to do
with my own position than with the fact that people like Karen Volkman
are starting to write a lot of sonnets. But as you say, interest in it
is comparatively very rare. Who knows whether it is really growing. I
don't personally care too much; as you say, we need to write the way we
need to do.
Just to clarify, briefly, I would say that a poem is structured by
repetition in a different way than a passage of prose. A prose
sentence might be characterized or decorated by repetition, but not
conspicuously structured by it, unless you are thinking of on the
phonemic level or something... Physically, obviously, metrical poetry
is structured by repetition. Traditional left-justified free verse
uses the line as a kind of repeated element--the linebreak repeats down
the page the way a rhyme pattern would.
I totally agree with what you say about syllabic meter, btw.
I notice these two lines in one of your own poems--
She spoke the gestures
of her native land
Judging from the content of these lines, it seems like all that
training in iambic pentameter gave you a sense of it as some kind of
"home."
I have just been reading Mark Van Doren's book on Dryden--had never
read Dryden before. I'm impressed with your having read him so deeply.
What drew you to Dryden? I see an odd kinship with your current work.
Annie
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