what's your poetic achilles'-heel?

WillOtheWisp · Feb 28, 2014

twelveoone said:
Read further, while entertaining they are often cutting and stabbing, sometimes at the form itself, i.e. ee cummings

"next to of course god america i"

My comments on sonnets were generalizations; perilous in most contexts, perhaps downright futile in poetry.

But I think E.E. Cummings (or e.e. cummings?) makes a poor witness for a case that formal poetry can have a visceral bite.

In the poem you cite, Cummings per his modus operandi, has tortured the sonnet form to his own device. Most noticeably, Cummings amputates the pithy little couplet at the end. Is a pithy-little-couplet-less sonnet still a sonnet? The "rules" of sonnets these days are also futile generalizations; that is in large part a Cummings legacy.

But I don't think a poet should be allowed to call it a sonnet if the central punch of their poem lies in the rule-breaking.

Not that I (i?) mind. Good poetry is where you read it.

Tzara · Feb 28, 2014

WillOtheWisp said:
But I think E.E. Cummings (or e.e. cummings?) makes a poor witness for a case that formal poetry can have a visceral bite.

In the poem you cite, Cummings per his modus operandi, has tortured the sonnet form to his own device. Most noticeably, Cummings amputates the pithy little couplet at the end. Is a pithy-little-couplet-less sonnet still a sonnet?

Cummings' sonnet is a cross between an English sonnet and and Italian sonnet. His rhyme scheme is ababcdcdefgfeg. An English sonnet traditionally ends with a couplet, as you state. An Italian sonnet is of two parts, an octave (often, but not always, rhymed abbacddc) and a sestet, which has various rhyme patterns, usually a variant of efgefg. So Cummings' piece is essentially an Italian sonnet with an octave rhymed in the fashion of an English sonnet.

Not that any of this matters, of course. Other, later poets (e.g., Ted Berrigan) go much further than Cummings in playing around with the sonnet.

This post, by the way, illustrates at least a couple of my faults as a writer: (1) A tendency to talk too much, and (2) irritating sententiousness.

Apologies for the interruption; please resume your usual programming.

Tsotha · Feb 28, 2014

HarryHill said:
<<<<points at Tsotha and laughs.

What, I just ate it. After having it shoved into my mouth to shut me up.

WillOtheWisp · Mar 1, 2014

@Tzara
Keep talking. The more you talk about things you know, the less I talk about things I don't. Plus I learned a new word, "sententiousness", which I promise not to use in a sonnet despite a compulsive urge to try.

@HarryHill
point taken. Ofcourse the simplest explanation for my frustration with sonnets is that I just haven't figured out how to make them really emote. The way I'm going on, you would think I hate the form instead of love it. But since coming to this forum I think I've become more sensitive to its limitations. Kinda feels like I'm waltzing in a rave.

@Butters
There's popcorn?

Tzara · Mar 1, 2014

WillOtheWisp said:
@Tzara
Keep talking. The more you talk about things you know, the less I talk about things I don't. Plus I learned a new word, "sententiousness", which I promise not to use in a sonnet despite a compulsive urge to try.

Actually, while I am often sententious, the more correct word for my response would have been "pedantic," which definitition merely says something like "of or like a pedant."

Welcome to the forum, hey?

twelveoone · Mar 1, 2014

WillOtheWisp said:
twelveoone said:

Read further, while entertaining they are often cutting and stabbing, sometimes at the form itself, i.e. ee cummings

"next to of course god america i"

My comments on sonnets were generalizations; perilous in most contexts, perhaps downright futile in poetry.

But I think E.E. Cummings (or e.e. cummings?) makes a poor witness for a case that formal poetry can have a visceral bite.

In the poem you cite, Cummings per his modus operandi, has tortured the sonnet form to his own device. Most noticeably, Cummings amputates the pithy little couplet at the end. Is a pithy-little-couplet-less sonnet still a sonnet? The "rules" of sonnets these days are also futile generalizations; that is in large part a Cummings legacy.

But I don't think a poet should be allowed to call it a sonnet if the central punch of their poem lies in the rule-breaking.

Not that I (i?) mind. Good poetry is where you read it.

Click to expand...

perhaps the device is tortured as an emulation of the torturous use of patriotism, which seemed to me to be the central punch - possible? a sort of metapoetry?

similar to Yeats
And Agamemnon dead.
in Leda and the Swan?

what's your poetic achilles'-heel?

WillOtheWisp

Experienced

Tzara

Continental

Tsotha

donnyQ

WillOtheWisp

Experienced

Tzara

Continental

twelveoone

ground zero

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