I agree wholeheartedly with what Stephen has to say. I, too, am wary
of the wide embrace of Annie's arguments.
At some level - and in no way am I accusing Annie of this - I find
some uses of formal terms reductionist. I recall listening to a BBC
radio program and the voice describing Ezra's Cantos as a "macaroon" -
he used different languages in his poetry - and I thought then that
that term really doesn't capture the hugeness of Pounds achievements,
or the shape of what he did. Rather, it defines and sets them in a
safe containment zone. Although I find an echo in this when Annie
describes free verse as a collection of line endings - which, for me,
does not do justice to the wild anarchy of the whole thing - from
organic forms to collage, to concrete, to found. I should read the
book, I guess, as maybe this throwaway remark doesn't do her justice.
Still, setting aside the reductionist aspects, tieing form to meter
doesn't hack it for me. I 've never found the positive accents to
formal meter. It's never opened vistas for me, to tell me the good
story; rather I feel the sense of forbidding every time I open a book
on form and start down the crocheting of stresses, non-stresses etc
etc. It seems to miss out more than it includes.
I agree with Doug that forms are very zeitgeisty. However, I tend to
think of them as cleeving towards a more culturally conservative view
point. Much like the fluff points I keep hearing about DIY religion
being verboten. Then again, I don't go a bundle on the current fashion
for good and evil.
One thing I've never really done is to move alongside, to acheive a
deep rapport with a poet. It's something I should do as I think I'm
probably missing a lot. I have tended to plough my own field, finding
for myself a structure for each poem, a democracy of forms. I suppose
I come back to the historicity of each form: why should I use a
particular form for a particular set of words. Some forms come laden
with history. My earliest reading was the Kalevala, and one that tried
to replicate the speicial meter of that poem. I recently tried to
resurrect the sound that I heard then
(http://www.badstep.net/poetry/DaysOfFuturePast/Footman.html), only to
realise it fell into the traps I have been trying to avoid these
years.
I was interested to read of Annie's frission of excitement as a
feminist dealing with forms. My question for Annie is: what difference
has a feminist sensibility made to the study - and outcomes - of meter
and form?
Roger
On 8/26/05, Stephen Vincent <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Is it fair to consider everybody writing poetry on some level "a formalist."
> ??
> I begin to feel that's the ultimate embrace of Annie's argument.
--
http://www.badstep.net
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