Michael Snider mentioned a number of poets who moved, so to speak, from
metrical verse to freer forms. An especially interestng case is Adrienne
Rich, as in her case it was definitely 'politics' (if what are often called
personal politics) that moved her out. She could not write what was in ehr
to write within the confines of metrical verse. As someone who found my way
early to open or organic form in such writers as those found in The New
American Poetry, I always found it interesting to put her beside Levertov,
who came, as I see it, to organic form through a formal recognition early,
while Rich, it seems to me, started formally within the metric tradition
but had no choice given her life choices (& here Creeley's 'form is never
more than an extension of content' seems to be in force) but to move into
'free verse' or whatever 'we' end up calling it...
Doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
Beauty's whatever
makes the adrenalin run.
John Newlove
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