Mark Weiss wrote:
>Forget about theory for a minute. This is about practice. It's really >very
simple. Instead of deciding in advance what the work will look >like one
lets the poem find its own form. Then one goes back and >cleans up--gets rid
of the false starts, dead ends and dishonesties, >tinkers with lineation,
finds the word that one couldn't remember in >the act but which is really
more appropriate. If the poem achieves >some form of closure, that's ok, but
it's not ok to impose it--no big >chords at the end, no moral zinger meant
to give a sense of ending >that belies the randomness of experience.
This is certainly a feasible way to write, but why is it more honest than
writing a sonnet? Do you really think that just by writing quickly with no
form in your mind you are somehow evading form altogether and offering a
direct route in to your thoughts and feelings? Without structuring you
wouldn't have any. The privileging of free verse as somehow more authentic
than 'form' (traditional or otherwise) is based on a romantic myth.
Peter Riley wrote:
>There is in fact a complete one in Cambridge
A cathedral in Cambridge? News to me.
Best wishes,
Matthew Francis
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01962 853396
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