The Spontaneous Notebook March 13, 2011
Posted by Mark Folse in Poetry, Toulouse Street.trackback
THE WRITING OF POETRY IS NOT A CRAFT.
WE ARE MAKING BIRDS, NOT BIRDCAGES.
–Dean Young, from The Art of Recklessness
Which is not to say we are freed from all responsibility to form or the traditions that inform us, only that a slavish adherence to formalism or it’s complete abandonment may or may not be poetry (or story or novel or what have you).
Somewhere along the way I started to lose the sense of Toulouse Street as notebook, the idea that in this age quotes such as this don’t belong in my little notebook where I might forget to share it, will never get around to writing our modern letters via email to someone about these lines, but instead if it struck me this powerfully I should just post it here in my worldly journal.
Shame on me.
or at these independent New Orleans bookstores:
Form is a crutch, sorry to disagree with you. Of course we can not live/write without tradition, although we must be very careful that the Big T does not turn into nostalgia or sentimentality. The best poems are piss cutters & if your piss is cut by rhyming, etc., it’s all about the prostrate, not awe.
Form can take many forms. I’m not arguing for the villanelle (just wrote one as an exercise), and I often wonder why some stanzas are rendered as prose when they would be just as effective (but maybe that just a prejudice toward the lyric essay and its possibilities). I think the author would, in general, agree with you. It’s a great essay, which I devoured about half of yesterday.
poetry, itself, i think is a “form”. to say “form” is a crutch seems a bit short-sighted. it is usually pretty obvious when a poet is overwhelmed by formalism. the soul isn’t there. but to say anyone writing in a formal method is somewhat crippled by, say the sonnet, then i don’t think i have any use for anything else you have to say about poetry.
To break the rules first know them well
is every con man’s golden rule.
Go off and write a villanelle.
To write poems that ring like a bell
You first must take your brain to school.
To break the rules first know them well.
The haiku and the sonnet tell
Your voice how best to wield the tool.
Go off and write a villanelle.
To write a poem in form compels
Proficiency in every school.
To break the rules first know them well.
The great free verse poets all retell
The lessons drawn from ancient pools.
Go off and write a villanelle.
You can’t just toss off lines pell-mell
Unless you would be thought a fool.
To break the rules first know them well.
Go off and write a villanelle.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry