Does it matter?
My understanding of open and closed form (I work in the former) has
nothing to do with "form" as in sonnet, prose poem (a form in a very
different sense of the word), etc, but with how one goes about it.
Recollected in tranquility is closed form--the poet knows where
he/she's going before he/she starts. Closed form. Or discovers form
and its extension content (and vice versa) in process. Open form.
Using the word form in yet another sense.
Best,
Mark
At 07:47 AM 4/15/2010, you wrote:
>After reading numerous prose poems or things purported to be prose poems,
>I'm still in the dark about what constitutes same and what the discernible
>difference is between prose (particularly now that we have a category called
>'postcard fiction') and the prose poem?
>John Herbert Cunningham
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
>Behalf Of Tim Allen
>Sent: April-15-10 5:32 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: review of the new Les Murray
>
>Well yes Doug, the shift has by no means been absolute, just
>considerable enough to my mind to be worth mentioning.
>
>My bias too has always been towards open forms but the relationship of
>lots of little open forms to a more fixed macro form that encompasses
>the lot, such as in many modern long poems and sequences, is
>problematic.
>
>Is the prose poem (or what we normally think of as being a prose poem)
>an open or closed form?
>
>Tim A.
>
>On 14 Apr 2010, at 20:49, Douglas Barbour wrote:
>
> > Um? I would not assume any such shift as absolute, that's for sure.
> > But, indeed, one finally has to come back to what works, & that's
> > how well any particular poet does the job at hand. (Though I admit
> > my bias is toward the open not the closed forms...
> >
> > Doug
> > On 14-Apr-10, at 4:03 AM, Tim Allen wrote:
> >
> >> 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.
> >
> > Douglas Barbour
> > [log in to unmask]
> >
> > http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
> >
> > Latest books:
> > Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> > http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
> > Wednesdays'
> >
>http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.h
>tml
> >
> > The secret
> >
> > which got lost neither hides
> > nor reveals itself, it shows forth
> >
> > tokens.
> >
> > Charles Olson
Announcing The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry (University
of California Press).
http://go.ucpress.edu/WholeIsland
"Not since the 1982 publication of Paul Auster's Random House Book of
Twentieth Century French Poetry has a bilingual anthology so
effectively broadened the sense of poetic terrain outside the United
States and also created a superb collection of foreign poems in
English. There is nothing else like it." John Palattella in The
Nation
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