FORM vs content

[CharleyH]

We all have our styles, and some of us, like me, are content motivated ... getting the right images, metaphor based, right - in the shortest space that can make you think what we, as poets, mean.

I look at Angeline's sestina and am awed by her precision of words - the beauty of use of form. I read Mutts thread and wonder if people need end rhyme? To me - and no offence Mutt, end rhyme is Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, who I admire greatly, and who can change a language and make it mean something, but end rhyme is childs play. Do you mix your rhyme? Write by form? What is poignant to you? Important in writing poetry. I expect Mutt to say for Miss, and not to please the self, which is the answer I look for. WHAT PLEASES YOU as a poet? Rhyme, cadence, form, imagery ... more? What do you like to read?

What is the NEW POETRY? In 2005?

 

[Lauren Hynde]

We all have our styles, and some of us, like me, are content motivated ... getting the right images, metaphor based, right - in the shortest space that can make you think what we, as poets, mean.

I look at Angeline's sestina and am awed by her precision of words - the beauty of use of form. I read Mutts thread and wonder if people need end rhyme? To me - and no offence Mutt, end rhyme is Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, who I admire greatly, and who can change a language and make it mean something, but end rhyme is childs play. Do you mix your rhyme? Write by form? What is poignant to you? Important in writing poetry. I expect Mutt to say for Miss, and not to please the self, which is the answer I look for. WHAT PLEASES YOU as a poet? Rhyme, cadence, form, imagery ... more?

Personally, I don't think you can put it in terms of one or the other. Poetry is the perfect fusion of both form and content - and if you have to choose one over the other, you'll end up missing a lot. A lot of people - mostly those who are just discovering poetry - will say that it doesn't matter if the rhyme isn't great, if the meter is all over the place, if there is no structure: what matters is that it means, and that it is heartfelt.

No point in going there. You all know what I think about that.

When I write, content and structure are undissociable. If I opt for a theme, for a tone, for an image, the structure will emerge from there. The opposite is also true. If I start with the intent of writing a form poem, the process will be primarily structural, because rhyme, meter, rhythm, etc must be integrated a, but the imagery is elicits must always be there - it needs to be a good poem regardless of being technically perfect.

But whatever the process may be, structure- or content-driven, one is always brought upon by the other, and almost never simply by random choice.

What is the NEW POETRY? In 2005?

No one can answer that one. New poetry is a series of experiments. You'll only be able to tell which ones worked and bared fruits 20 or 30 years from now.

 

[Kaishaku]

I guess it's really like you might expect...

What is the NEW POETRY? In 2005?

It's a lot of stuff... It's the New Formalism with AE Stallings, it's the continued shift to Bly and the Prose Poem, it's Alena Kaltyak Davis, Gerald Stern and Wanda Coleman redefining the sonnet, it's Maxine Kumin continuing to bring the simplicity of domestic and rural life into poetry, it's Russell Simmons slamming us with performance poetry... Floetry from Philadelphia... and Nikki Giovanni, it's all this and more.

The poetry of 2005 is the high browed MFA of Jorie Graham (judging contests and awarding prizes to her husband in those contests), it's the often awful, mediocre drivel flooding the internet and it's especially everywhere in between these two extremes. If you listen to the experts, poetry is about to be destroyed and at the same time, it's about to explode into an art form never before imagined.

More books, not just poetry, have been published in 2004 than ever before and yet, studies show, less people are reading books than ever before. If you go by how many books we produce, we are more literate than ever before, if you look at what we read, we are growing more illiterate.

Poetry is dying in 2005...
Poetry is thriving in 2005...

k.

 

[Angeline]

Look what happened to jazz. It went from dixieland to swing to bebop and hard bop and eventually free jazz. Now it is so scattered and everyone argues about where it's going and whether where it's going is a good place to go--just like poetry.

Some people think "real poetry" is form poetry or rhyming, which is ridiculous of course. Form poetry can be very beautiful and profound like Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, which is a villanelle. I think the fun way to write it is to blur sentences across lines, which makes it sound more natural--helps readers avoid singsongy readings.

None of my most favorite poets practiced the forms much except Ted Berrigan who wrote a lot of sonnets, but they were often very nontraditional.

I do think it's good practice writing in the forms because it's good exercise in manipulating language, but that's just me. You don't have to do it to write good poems though I bet most people's poetry (free verse) would benefit from being comfortable with forms.

What pleases me though is when I read or write something where the imagery is so strong that I can suspend my disbelief and step into the experience in a sensory way--see. feel, taste, smell the poem's meaning. And that can be in a form or not.

 

[CharleyH]

Personally, I don't think you can put it in terms of one or the other. Poetry is the perfect fusion of both form and content - and if you have to choose one over the other, you'll end up missing a lot. A lot of people - mostly those who are just discovering poetry - will say that it doesn't matter if the rhyme isn't great, if the meter is all over the place, if there is no structure: what matters is that it means, and that it is heartfelt.

No point in going there. You all know what I think about that.

When I write, content and structure are undissociable. If I opt for a theme, for a tone, for an image, the structure will emerge from there. The opposite is also true. If I start with the intent of writing a form poem, the process will be primarily structural, because rhyme, meter, rhythm, etc must be integrated a, but the imagery is elicits must always be there - it needs to be a good poem regardless of being technically perfect.

But whatever the process may be, structure- or content-driven, one is always brought upon by the other, and almost never simply by random choice.


No one can answer that one. New poetry is a series of experiments. You'll only be able to tell which ones worked and bared fruits 20 or 30 years from now.

I dont think you always show it, Lauren. I know what you think and why you do and I love you and your poetry, Can you get into a whole poetic rhetoric with a question? One question , love? Have you written a sestina. perhaps a sonnet? Have you ever written to classic form?

EDIT: OK TWO questions

 

[BooMerengue]

We all have our styles, and some of us, like me, are content motivated ... getting the right images, metaphor based, right - in the shortest space that can make you think what we, as poets, mean.

I look at Angeline's sestina and am awed by her precision of words - the beauty of use of form. I read Mutts thread and wonder if people need end rhyme? To me - and no offence Mutt, end rhyme is Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, who I admire greatly, and who can change a language and make it mean something, but end rhyme is childs play. Do you mix your rhyme? Write by form? What is poignant to you? Important in writing poetry. I expect Mutt to say for Miss, and not to please the self, which is the answer I look for. WHAT PLEASES YOU as a poet? Rhyme, cadence, form, imagery ... more? What do you like to read?

What is the NEW POETRY? In 2005?

Whaaaatt??? Sure- I agree- if the writer is content with mediocre poetry. End rhyme (and whatever form chosen) can be very difficult when one is trying to stay focused on a particular emotion, or thought or whatever. Whereas with free verse you can just plop anything down there and as long as your idea evokes a response, then the poem is good! Bah!

you hear me??? B A H !!!

*she said with a snicker as she sets back and waits...

 

[Angeline]

Whaaaatt??? Sure- I agree- if the writer is content with mediocre poetry. End rhyme (and whatever form chosen) can be very difficult when one is trying to stay focused on a particular emotion, or thought or whatever. Whereas with free verse you can just plop anything down there and as long as your idea evokes a response, then the poem is good! Bah!

you hear me??? B A H !!!

*she said with a snicker as she sets back and waits...

What if the response it evokes is eh?

 

[BooMerengue]

What if the response it evokes is eh?

eh + bah = Blah

lol

 

[CharleyH]

What if the response it evokes is eh?

How could it be with you nude
a finger swirling your clit
lips down
down
down .....
hard
is it a dildo?
a cock?
pressing ... urging
FORCING...

tune in tomorrow. i NEED something for a poem before i get too hot!

 

[Angeline]

How could it be with you nude
a finger swirling your clit
lips down
down
down .....
hard
is it a dildo?
a cock?
pressing ... urging
FORCING...

tune in tomorrow. i NEED something for a poem before i get too hot!

Um. I'd rather do it than write about it.

 

[CharleyH]

Um. I'd rather do it than write about it.

 

[Liar]

All poetry has form. Some are visually crafted, others sonically crafted. If they don't have form of some kind that goes beyond the actual telling of a scene or notion, it's prose.

The more regular structured form schemes, let's say an iambic thingy with (ooh, gasp) end rhymes sounds fucking good to read out loud if it's written well. It's a form that lends itself well to sonic focus. No free form thing I've ever seen could beat the flow of a good form poem. I've seen some that have come pretty close, but then thay have started to take on elements of form poetry, like internal rhyming and line rhythms.

The best spoken word performers and monolouges are freakishly close to rap music witout a turn table, because those structured elements rap uses simply make for good sounding text.

It's all about creating a mood, setting a scene, communication an emotion. You choice of words is merely one of many parts that you can work with in a poem to achieve that. I'd say that if you don't take into account the other parts, the visual aspect if the poem is foremost supposed to be printed or the sonic aspect if it's supposed to be read out loud, you are not doing your job as a poet.

There is no VS.

How could it be with you nude
a finger swirling your clit
lips down
down
down .....
hard
is it a dildo?
a cock?
pressing ... urging
FORCING...

That would be a typical visually oriented presentation, then. As opposed to this:

How could it be with you nude, a finger swirling your clit, lips down, down, down hard. Is it a dildo? A cock? Pressing, urging, forcing.

#L

 

[CharleyH]

All poetry has form. Some are visually crafted, others sonically crafted. If they don't have form of some kind that goes beyond the actual telling of a scene or notion, it's prose.

The more regular structured form schemes, let's say an iambic thingy with (ooh, gasp) end rhymes sounds fucking good to read out loud if it's written well. It's a form that lends itself well to sonic focus. No free form thing I've ever seen could beat the flow of a good form poem. I've seen some that have come pretty close, but then thay have started to take on elements of form poetry, like internal rhyming and line rhythms.

The best spoken word performers and monolouges are freakishly close to rap music witout a turn table, because those structured elements rap uses simply make for good sounding text.

It's all about creating a mood, setting a scene, communication an emotion. You choice of words is merely one of many parts that you can work with in a poem to achieve that. I'd say that if you don't take into account the other parts, the visual aspect if the poem is foremost supposed to be printed or the sonic aspect if it's supposed to be read out loud, you are not doing your job as a poet.

There is no VS.

That would be a typical visually oriented presentation, then. As opposed to this:

How could it be with you nude, a finger swirling your clit, lips down, down, down hard. Is it a dildo? A cock? Pressing, urging, forcing.

#L

OH REASON, just when we are hot onto something. DAMN you and your frigid weather!

But, thanks for your op, Liar

 

[twelveoone]

Look what happened to jazz. It went from dixieland to swing to bebop and hard bop and eventually free jazz. Now it is so scattered and everyone argues about where it's going and whether where it's going is a good place to go--just like poetry.

Some people think "real poetry" is form poetry or rhyming, which is ridiculous of course. Form poetry can be very beautiful and profound like Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, which is a villanelle. I think the fun way to write it is to blur sentences across lines, which makes it sound more natural--helps readers avoid singsongy readings.

None of my most favorite poets practiced the forms much except Ted Berrigan who wrote a lot of sonnets, but they were often very nontraditional.

I do think it's good practice writing in the forms because it's good exercise in manipulating language, but that's just me. You don't have to do it to write good poems though I bet most people's poetry (free verse) would benefit from being comfortable with forms.

What pleases me though is when I read or write something where the imagery is so strong that I can suspend my disbelief and step into the experience in a sensory way--see. feel, taste, smell the poem's meaning. And that can be in a form or not.

Ang
Excellent analogy, excellent description. I want it to make me think also.

to K "The poetry of 2005 is the high browed MFA of Jorie Graham"; she is pretty bad, is she? I was so turned off by two or three things she's done, I haven't read anything else by her, her translation of Dante's Inferno (canto20 i think) was so far below any others I have read.

to CH, why is end rhyme child's play? I think Mutt handles it well, good end rhyme, is good end rhyme, another tool, as are all of the things Lauren mentioned. For that matter why is any tool child's play?
I feel the content is paramount, it determines the stucture. A well ordered stucture without content is empty, useless.

 

[Liar]

OH REASON, just when we are hot onto something. DAMN you and your frigid weather!

But, thanks for your op, Liar

Oh, don't let me intrude.

Get on with the hotness, dammit! I'll make popcorn.

 

[twelveoone]

How could it be with you nude
a finger swirling your clit
lips down
down
down .....
hard
is it a dildo?
a cock?
pressing ... urging
FORCING...

tune in tomorrow. i NEED something for a poem before i get too hot!

and pardon me for saying so, what tools are you using?

 

[Angeline]

All poetry has form. Some are visually crafted, others sonically crafted. If they don't have form of some kind that goes beyond the actual telling of a scene or notion, it's prose.

The more regular structured form schemes, let's say an iambic thingy with (ooh, gasp) end rhymes sounds fucking good to read out loud if it's written well. It's a form that lends itself well to sonic focus. No free form thing I've ever seen could beat the flow of a good form poem. I've seen some that have come pretty close, but then thay have started to take on elements of form poetry, like internal rhyming and line rhythms.

The best spoken word performers and monolouges are freakishly close to rap music witout a turn table, because those structured elements rap uses simply make for good sounding text.

It's all about creating a mood, setting a scene, communication an emotion. You choice of words is merely one of many parts that you can work with in a poem to achieve that. I'd say that if you don't take into account the other parts, the visual aspect if the poem is foremost supposed to be printed or the sonic aspect if it's supposed to be read out loud, you are not doing your job as a poet.

There is no VS.

That would be a typical visually oriented presentation, then. As opposed to this:

How could it be with you nude, a finger swirling your clit, lips down, down, down hard. Is it a dildo? A cock? Pressing, urging, forcing.

#L

I agree with what you're saying, but if you took a poem that is strongly metaphoric (which can also be visual) and you altered the structure, where would you draw the line between prose and poetry? I find some of Virgina Woolf's prose to be more poetic in spite of the fact that it's layed out in full sentences (some of her writing in Orlando, especially)--or James Joyce, for that matter. What if you took someone like Wallace Stevens and changed the structure so the sentences flowed like normal sentences? How would you classify it?

And you are right on about poetry read aloud. I heard Allen Ginsberg read a bunch of times and to see his words on a page, it's just free verse, but to hear him read is rhythmic, lyrical. eagleyez has a cd of Kerouac reading his poems and it's the same dynamic--it takes on a rhythm that is almost musical when you hear it read aloud.

 

[ruminator]

In my learning process I seem to have picked up on this by reading others' works and absorbing the variety of styles. I don't seem to do as well if I try to follow a set of rules but the unwritten rules I inherently possess seem to incorporate the form/content balance of power.

I understand the concept of end rhyme as chid's play but I don't agree with it completely. Sometimes a work can be very mature in content but experienced as play. I get that feeling when I'm building something that is simply fun. I think it also has several effective uses in serious works.

I agree that it's an overall balance that takes all factors in consideration to portray the form and content effectively.

 

[BooMerengue]

Maybe I misunderstood. I thought that Charley meant that writing end rhymes is child's play. With that in mind, reread my post. Or did I in fact misunderstand her?

 

[ruminator]

Maybe I misunderstood. I thought that Charley meant that writing end rhymes is child's play. With that in mind, reread my post. Or did I in fact misunderstand her?

In reading the entire thread I get the impression that end rhyme is viewed with a degree of condescending attitude in general. I take this to mean that it evokes a sense of the author not being professional when that element is used. I could be mistaken in this impression I get. I don't feel that way about using end rhyme.

I'm not that familiar with the particular mechanics of style in general. Learning more is just one of the reasons I'm here.

I added my opinion as a new writer who has learned by reading.

 

[ag2507]

child's play...

End rhyme is fucking difficult! it is easy to do and sound banal but to do it well without forcing the lines and making the listener/reader unaware of your craft and have it enhance the poem is really very difficult.

As to form: many of the best freeform poems have form or structure: you just have to look a little harder for it - it may be a repeated word, or line or idea, it may be a twist, or an anagram, or an acrostic.

I often play games with my friends hiding rhymes in unusual places but in a consistent pattern or taking a word and corrupting it throughout the poem.

Form is a tool, free form poetry is really very difficult, maintaining the stress of the poem throughout and avoiding saggy lines or ghastly cliches. I have a friend who writes mediocre free form poetry who wanted to write about a haiku so chose the use a form with a haiku word pattern for every stanza: that poem rocked because she had to work the words, not just drizzle them out.

In the end a poem works, not because you wrote it, but because you treated the reader/listener with respect - making sure the ideas are clear and not clouded with pretty but unnessessary words. (A lot of writers of long poems waste ideas: breaking the poem up can often make 6 or 10 or more good poems out of one long bad one.) Any poem longer than a page has to be very good to maintain anyones attention to the end.

 

[bogusbrig]

For me content is vital. I think so much of contemporary poetry lacks content altogether in favour of form. There is so much poetry around where you just look at it and it feels so predictable because the content appears to have followed the form. It's almost as if you can read a line and can guess what will come next. This is an exaggeration of course but the reason I became disentchanted and bored with writing poetry and even reading poetry is because of the predictability of the structure along with the middleclass claustrophobia of the subject matter of a lot of poetry. Education really knows how to turn kids off liking poetry.

Then I saw a repeat on TV of Adrian Mitchell in a film about a poetry reading at the Royal Albert Hall in the late sixties, Ginsberg was topping the bill but for me Adrian Mitchill was the star. It was as if he said 'fuck you!' poetry is what I say it is, its political, its a game, it fun, its angry and I'll write it how I damn well want to write it. The irony is, his poetry is very structured but it was his irreverence I loved and it gave me the impetus to just experiment and do what the damn hell I like and if people don't think it is poetry tough, there are plenty of people who will. Education failed me because they managed to bore me of everything that is worth knowing so I don't pay so much atttention to what academics say anymore. When it comes to poetry I listen to people I respect and whether they happen to be academics or road sweepers, it doesn't matter.

Hmm I guess a poem works or it doesn't, regardless of its form or content, it's the poets ability to be a conjuror and to conjure up some linguistic magic.

Now get me off this damn soap box!!!

 

[Liar]

I agree with what you're saying, but if you took a poem that is strongly metaphoric (which can also be visual) and you altered the structure, where would you draw the line between prose and poetry? I find some of Virgina Woolf's prose to be more poetic in spite of the fact that it's layed out in full sentences (some of her writing in Orlando, especially)--or James Joyce, for that matter. What if you took someone like Wallace Stevens and changed the structure so the sentences flowed like normal sentences? How would you classify it?

Hmm. Depends on the context I guess. Why present a piece in one structure or another structure? Wouldn't have the cojones to touch other people's stuff like that, but I see what you mean. On the other hand, where is it to be said that prose can't be eloquent, innovative and hands down beautiful to read? I would draw the line in the intent of how it is supposed to be precieved. To me, poetry is a multimedia experience, where as prose is focused on the words alone.

Tell me this, Why do you break lines? Why does everyone (or almost everyone) who jots down a poem use a visual structure like that, if it's not an essential part of the process? The breaks, the groupings and the pauses is just as much a part of the language as the metaphors and alliterations we love to play with.

#L

 

[bogusbrig]

Tell me this, Why do you break lines? Why does everyone (or almost everyone) who jots down a poem use a visual structure like that, if it's not an essential part of the process? The breaks, the groupings and the pauses is just as much a part of the language as the metaphors and alliterations we love to play with.

#L

Visual structure on the page comes with the ability to write. Writing has to be structured somehow to make sense. That seems so obvious there seems little point in saying it but it's true. For me visual structure is a form of punctuation but also a poem's concrete manifestation on the page is as much a visual art form. When the poem is read its visual structure is interpreted into the linguistic by the reader.

Most poetry started out as a form of story telling but now narrative is looked down on in poetry. It seems since the creation of the novel, poetry has been forever more pushed into a ghetto it doesn't deserve and poets have been as much responsible for this as anyone else. Poetry needs to be exciting and as innovative as other art forms to survive. To have a myopic view of what is 'real' poetry and what isn't, only serves to increase poetry's isolation.

As practitioners I can understand ones need to dissect and discuss the craft of poetry but when it gets to the ridiculous extreme that the visual arts got with its navel gazing and producing white paintings on white walls and calling it the purest form of the art, it's time to hand the asylum back over to the patients.

 

[bogusbrig]

Whereas with free verse you can just plop anything down there and as long as your idea evokes a response, then the poem is good! Bah!

you hear me??? B A H !!!

*she said with a snicker as she sets back and waits...

You can't plop anything down in free verse, the poem still has to work and for the writer of free verse there is no convention to fall back on, s/he is working without a safety net.

As for poetry restricted to a particular emotion or thought or whatever, isn't that the way a poet ends up writing poetry about their own navel and readerless? I'm not saying there isn't any great poetry that is so restricted, of course there is and plenty of it but it's also a way for someone to pretend they are a poet, by hiding behind form. However, how do you write poems of the length and quality of Yevtushenko's Zima Junction with such restriction?

It seems to me, the challenge for modern western poetry to be able to create powerful poems that can have at once, a panoramic view of subject whilst remaining focused on the human condition.

Whilst I understand the view that creativity requires one to work within conventions and anyone can pretend to be creative if one pays no respect for the rules of convention, rules are also there to be broken. Convention is still an anchor point even if you stray beyond its boundaries. (That sounds like I'm contradicting my opening statement but it is a matter of perspective.)