I've been observing this site for awhile. Allow me to introduce myself. I am
the host of Speaking of Poets heard Sundays from 4:30 to 5:00 p.m. CST on
CKUW 95.9 FM. I regularly review poetry for a number of journals in Canada
and the U.S. I also write poetry, conduct interviews, etc. I am intrigued by
this notion of free verse and form being binaries placing proponents on
opposite sides of the political spectrum. I believe that a rapprochement is
now occurring with several poets - Anne Simpson and Elizabeth Bachinsky, to
name two - are equally at home writing both experimental and formal poetry.
The two named are Canadian poets. I don't know whether the same is
occurring in either the U.S. of the U.K.
John Herbert Cunningham
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Tim Allen
Sent: April-14-10 5:04 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: review of the new Les Murray
The trouble is Uche, it's not rot, not historically. Of course it
wasn't the case that everyone who wrote free verse was hippy or
leftist or whatever and everyone who wrote iambic was conservative -
but it was the case, particularly here in the UK, that behind the
conscious choice of writing one way or the other lay that same nexus
of belief and life-style that lent itself to political leanings and
ideological gestures. The perception that free verse was, by its very
name and nature, linked to ideas of freedom and an example of that
freedom in action, was common. So too was the notion of form as being
conservative, anal, fussy, stuck in the past, concerned with outmoded
ways of thinking, anti progress, anti free etc.
That moment lasted in its pure black and white state for a very
limited period - it soon morphed and became a lot more complex - but
in many peoples' minds the opposition continued and even now you can
pick it up in a section of the rump of surviving small-press magazines
etc. If anything the idea lasted a lot longer in the States than it
did in the UK - it became one of the main street-level oppositions to
the poetry of the avant garde formalists and intellectuals.
I have written before concerning the subtle shift in the ideology of
free verse from progressive to reactionary that has taken place over
the past 30 years.
Tim A.
On 13 Apr 2010, at 23:32, Uche Ogbuji wrote:
> Sometimes a fool is just a fool. People who think that poetic form
> has some
> bearing on politics infuriate me. I have no idea how the prejudice
> came
> about that hippies write in free verse and that Reaganite-
> Thatcherites write
> in form, but I'd love to take a stick of dynamite to that rot.
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