mepoetics 1

mepoetics is all about me (an amateur poet attempts to answer the voices in his head)

Why I Will Never Be a Strict Formalist

So what is it about formalist poetry that stops me from embracing it with all my soul? Is it me? Is it the Groucho Marx syndrome, the Hawkeye Pierce pattern, the Abbie Hoffman disorder, the Walter Mitty condition, the Maynard G. Krebbs disease, or a number of other clinical issues that I carry around with me in my everyday common and uninteresting psyche? Is it political, or some socio-economic dysfunction? Or is it just the rules?

I’m fine with the technical aspects of meter, especially as outlined by Timothy Steele. Meter operates on the micro level and to me is much like the notes of music. It’s a rhythmic tool. But those established forms and their strict regulations, whether it be some pantoum, sestina, or even sonnet: I can’t abide by them. I can read them and appreciate some, but I can’t make myself write them. I’ve tried. But when I do, I really don’t. My sonnets aren’t really sonnets.

Not that I don’t write in form. I’ve played with the idea and discovered schemes that make sense to me, forms that answer my needs in writing, or my plain ideas concerning poetry: the Dylanesque Sestet, the Desolation Sonnet, the Gregorian Sonnet. But I’m certainly not a literary theorist; my forays in that field never take themselves too seriously. These nonce forms of mine are really small-f forms.

But Forms: they’re much too much like religions to me. Ah! That’s it: the lapsed Catholic complaint.