Linked poems can be a sort of long poem, and I don't agree they're out of
favour - most poets write one or mroe during their career - look at all
those Ted Hughes wrote; and Tom Paulin wrote a long one - they just arent
publsihed all that often. And many poets choose the sequence option, perphas
because you can then publish bits of the poem, though some people (eg  Edwin
Morgan) thought that for some reason the old fashioned style long poem
doesnt make sense today. I dont see why not. Perhaps a poem sequence is less
like a hybrid between a novel and a poem, which many long poems are.

And I think writers need something more substantial to be doing. If you ve
ever written stories you will know how they link up with writing novels.
Sometimes we get tired of writing bitty thing and want a long haul. I think
readers will go along with us if the poem/sequence is good enough, but will
publishers?  

I dont think the attention span argument is right in itself, but the
heightened tensions of short poems has to become something different in
longer poems (or longer work, if you're talking sequences) either its like
Bob's simile of a meal, or the heightened parts are spread through the whole
in a manageable way.
Many magazines I suspect are only based on short poems because they are
basically for amateurs who want to see their short undemanding page length
work in print. Page length work or even sonnet length and smaller can be
absoultely marvellous I know.
You can get the Long Poem Group Newsletter on Google - Sebastian Barker and
William Oxley were the ringleaders of this - and it conked out when they got
tired of it as they were a bit dictatorial. There's no doubt lots of other
stuff if you google "all the words" poem and sequence
cheers
SallyE


 on 20/2/06 4:26 pm, Bob Cooper at [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Matt writes:
> "to open up another discussion point, what has been everybody's experiences
> of writing poem sequences like this?"
> and he goes on: "As well as the discipline that James mentions, it must
> offer an opportunity to allow poems to work off each other, but I suppose it
> carries its own risks, such as repetition. I ask because I've been working
> on a series of linked poems and prose pieces about a very obscure historical
> character, and have found it both more difficult than writing 'occasional'
> poems, but also more rewarding in many ways. I'd be interested to hear
> people's thoughts."
> 
> Hi Matt (and all else who're reading this),
> 
> I, too, find myself wanting to write poems that are in a series. I find,
> however, I'm not too disciplined in how I approach it. I don't, for
> instance, map out the issues/themes/topics I feel important to cover in the
> series, I just write one and then another - then put them in a possible
> order and start wondering about how to fill in the gaps!
> I guess, because we're conditioned to read and write short poems - and the
> long poem has fallen from favour - narrative poetry, as a genre, needs
> sequences or series of poems.
> I wonder, sometimes, about the attention span of readers of poetry. Perhaps
> that's why I feel happier reading a series of short, self-contained, poems
> that have subtle links, and underlying impressions that rise to the surface
> when I discover them, but I'm daunted when faced with a poem that goes on
> for pages and pages. However...
> It could be that short poems are like nibbling chocolate, or eating oranges
> (for rhyming poems) or plums(from the icebox in the fridge), whereas a
> series of poems is like a 5 course meal with lots of things in each course,
> and a fine wine or two (and even with sherry before and port - or a really
> good Malt! - afterwards!).
> Bob