Poetry is Form - Discuss?

[Elphin]

A little interchange between Brian and I

I like that - there is something more satsifying I think with good poetry in a form rather than free verse. Discuss?

As I have said many times, poetry IS form, and I am becoming increasingly bored with poetics that attempt to deny this fact. Something in there ties in with the pretentious comment perhaps? If you want to start a discussion I'll give it some more thought, fer sure.

What do you think? Poetry is Form - Yes or No or .....

elph

[Lake]

Isn't free verse a form, too? Just asking.

[k-j]

Yes, poetry is form.

However, poetry can have form without having a formal structure.

[Elphin]

So we are distinguishing form from formal structure which would mean Lake is right - free verse would be a form. Yes?

Or should we be saying poetry is formal structure or at the very least poetry with formal structure is more satisfying?

elph

[k-j]

I don't think free verse is a form in itself, in the way that the sonnet is a form. If you write in free verse, i.e. without a formal (metrical) structure, then you need to use some other poetic device to give your writing form and make it poetry. You might use rhyme or other sonics, or structure it by the juxtaposition of imagery, for example. This is almost as hard to describe as it is to achieve, which is why so much free verse poetry doesn't strike me as poetry at all.

I find poetry with a formal structure satisfying to read and write, usually (although not always) more so than free verse. This is just because free verse is so very difficult to do well. In fact all poetry is difficult to do well, but if you use a formal structure and fail, all you have is a bad poem. If you fail at free verse, you don't even have that, you just have julienned prose.

[Travis]

Form is poetry I think. The opening credits of Baywatch spring to mind.

[k-j]

Form is poetry I think. The opening credits of Baywatch spring to mind.

Ha ha! Great choice of verb.

[Bombadil]

Well, certainly form can be poetic (though Baywatch must surely represent a canned piece of Petrarch), but poetry need not have form to be so. At least not insofar as it has been defined by Brian, methinks.

This is a tough one, though, since language itself relies on formal conventions, however fluid and variant over time and from language to language. So, I think we probably have to better define what we mean by form, if indeed we are going to say that poetry requires it or doesn't. It requires a kind of syntax, surely.

Although, there are those who would say that jazz skat lyrics are without form. Except that they are bound (at least tangentially) to the music.

I'm divided so I'll quote Robert Frost:

"Free verse is like playing tennis without a net."

and Ezra Pound:

"Breaking the pentameter, that is the first step."

[k-j]

I'm divided so I'll quote Robert Frost:

"Free verse is like playing tennis without a net."

and Ezra Pound:

"Breaking the pentameter, that is the first step."

Robert's right, Ezra's wrong. Making the pentameter is the first step: you have to make it before you can break it. And when you break it, you have to replace it with something.

[Bombadil]

It should be noted, though, that Frosty never really broke form.

I think the rest of the quote runs somewhere along the lines of: You could do it, but why would you want to?

I could be paraphrasing, just a touch.

[pseud]

I agree 100% with k-j. There is tremendous freedom in form.

[brianedwards]

It's possible to take any quote out of context and make it right or wrong, but value distinctions are irrelevant. Both Frost and Pound were right for the purposes in which they were intended, when they said what they said. Historically they have been proven to be both wrong and right.
Poetry is form, of course it is. I'm not talking about fixed forms like the sestina, or any verse which usually requires strict metre and rhyme. Poetry, all poetry, is form, including free verse. The fact that there is any distinction at all between poetry and prose confirms this is fact. Whenever we make comments along the lines of "This reads like prose", on what is the judgement formed? The choice of words? The content? There are no words or content which are exclusively the property of either/or, so what we are talking about is form, the formal presentation of the writing.
I've tried for a couple of days to respond to this thread, but the more I think and write, the more I realise how elementary the fact is, and therefore anything I say sounds trivial and trite. Modernists covered this ground over a century ago after all.
Some might assume that the extension of my statement could lead to the conclusion that all art is form. Of course, there is some truth to this, the difference being that the poet's (and the prose writer's) raw material is accessible to every other human being: language. Poet's consciously seek to manipulate the raw, shared thing, in order to make their art. Prose writer's do too, but with less explicit use of device.

[Ros]

I was hesitating to join in until someone defined what they meant by 'form'. I think Brian is right in saying that form is the presentation of the writing, that which makes it different from prose. In that case, of course, all poetry is (or has?) form.

Though that doesn't really comment on Elph's first comment that poetry in a formal structure can be more satisfying than free verse

Ros

[Sharra]

Poetry, all poetry, is form, including free verse.

I totally agree with this Brian, form is an intrinsic part of any poetry, formal structure is a completely different subject to form. So yes all poetry has form (and to some extent all writing - but lets not get off topic), but no it definitely does not have to conform to a recognised form.

I've been reading a lot of Oppen and Ashbury recently, they are by no stretch of the imagination writing to a form, but their form is vital to their writing.

For me personally I occasionally write to a formal structure, because it gives the writing a different flavour and makes me use words in a different way, and sometimes makes the writing tighter. I do think too that usually the form of the poem emerges as I write - rather than me dictating the poem's structure, the words seem to direct where they need to be.

Oh, and I don't enjoy reading poetry where form and rhyme drown out the words, so I prefer free verse.

Sharra
x

[brianedwards]

Just to clarify, I didn't say poetry has form form, but that it is form. It's an important distinction I think.
Elph's initial statement is an opinion and too subjective to be really discussed. I disagree, but so what?

I'm glad Nicky mentioned Ashbery, a poet who moves freely between fixed forms and free verse, never losing sight of the artifice of both.

B.

~

[twelveoone]

I'm divided so I'll quote Robert Frost:

"Free verse is like playing tennis without a net."

and Ezra Pound:

"Breaking the pentameter, that is the first step."

Robert's right, Ezra's wrong. Making the pentameter is the first step: you have to make it before you can break it. And when you break it, you have to replace it with something.

I thought Ol Ez' did (replaced). Early and often. As for Mr. Frost , he came from New England, where that would be a natural speech pattern, assuming you could get 10 syllables out of them. Seriously, it works for a Brit, every one I knew measured his speech in a natural voice. It's a real killer reading some of the things that come out of the MFA mills of America. Not natural, of course, more and more places I go, English is not natural. Spanish; makes me regret sleeping in High School.
Back to ol Ez, if the Cantos are blather most of it is highly poetic blather. But I also find Yeats blather, and Keats just sends me into peels of laughter. (Ginsberg does too sometimes, and I don't remember ever seeing a form from him.)
Poetry is not form, form is just a casing for the words at worst, a presentation at best, or an added disciple that the poet chooses to add. It will lend a sense of balance and repetition, which is easily done in free verse. It's only advantage that I can see is a sense of tightness. Certain forms do have specific advantages, I grant that.

[brianedwards]

Regards poetry being form, I vaguely remember a quote along the lines of language being pastry and poetry being the cutter. Something like that . . . I'll look it up. And if I can't find the source I'll claim it as my own.

The way I see it, saying poetry isn't form is the equivalent of saying all language is art.

B.

[brianedwards]

Form is sound..

I'd agree with that.

[benjamin]

(Ginsberg does too sometimes, and I don't remember ever seeing a form from him.)

Read the Old Testament, specifically the Psalms, and listen to Hebrew prayer hymns. You will see the formal elements of Ginsberg much more easily that way.

[brianedwards]

(Ginsberg does too sometimes, and I don't remember ever seeing a form from him.)

Read the Old Testament, specifically the Psalms, and listen to Hebrew prayer hymns. You will see the formal elements of Ginsberg much more easily that way.

Beat me to the punch. I was gonna say read Kaddish, but the point is essentially the same.

B.

[benjamin]

"Kaddish" is an excellent example, but even "Howl" is basically one really long psalm.