actually, Annie Finch and a lot of the other female formalists talk and
write on this a lot, re: content
Annie was on an avant garde forms panel with me once: she used a villanelle
from Lee Ann Brown's the sleep that changed everything to show that the form
had taken Lee Ann to a much different place than she usually travels in her
work -- through Annie also said that she thought Lee Ann, being engaged with
form in a different way than someone like Annie (Lee Ann is very engaged
with form, but more as a game or constraint, imo), wasn't able to capitalize
on the movement.
In another example, Jenny Factor talks about the way in which form
allowed/allows her to control her content; that without it, she wouldn't be
able to write poems at all (though another difference might be Jenny was a
formalist child poet as well as returning to poetry as an adult). That her
poems have to "take form."
So there is a body of opinion that form ends up stopping some poets from
writing what they would, while it enables others. And of course, that
certain forms are more congenial to certain poet-packages of content and
decorum than others. They key being that a good poem should be firing on
all cylinders.
I tend to experience repetitive form as a bludgeon and constraint as, well,
um, rather constraining.
--
All best,
Catherine Daly
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