In recent revision of one of my free verse poems, I decided that I would attempt to transform it into some received form–perhaps a dizain because of the mirroring aspect of that form.
Rewriting a free verse poem into a form is obviously an artistic choice, but is it also a political one? The poem is about lynching. Is there a difference between writing a free verse poem about lynching and writing a formal poem about lynching? Is there a statement in there about what are suitable topics for rigidity and artifice? Do we transform a poem’s meaning through lineation and rhyme, or just its appearance, as if with a magic wand? Fitting the form to the sense is something that many writers recommend (as do I), so what statement is it actually making if we determine that the sense of a particular poem fits a form? Are we saying that lynching (to use my example) is a particularly dizain-ish historical fact? That it has a stateliness and a predictability?
I’ve often said that a sonnet can be about anything. But does the act of creating a sonnet change the topic?
I’m thinking about these things instead of actually, you know, writing poems.
I think the belief that form is making a political statement is incorrect.
I also think that this belief is, in part, responsible, for a lot of the ‘less-than-successful’ contemporary free verse.
Classic poetic forms do, to a great extent, help poets shape their thoughts, rather than just splatting words onto a page (or screen, as the case may be).
That’s my 2c, and it’s not a highly considered argument yet. I may attempt to make a more structured response.
And btw, what’s a dizain?
A dizain is a 10 line poem, generally written in IP, that rhymes ababbccdcd.
I can’t point you to many examples because they are pretty rare, but here’s one of mine.
So you don’t think that the shape thoughts take can be just as political as the thoughts themselves?
Thanks for the link, Julie.
As for your question, I’m not sure. My first instinct would be to say ‘yes, the shape thoughts take [i]can[/i] be as political as the thoughts themselves, but it’s not necessarily a given.
My second instinct would be to smack myself upside the head and tell myself to go sleep off the jetlag and come back another day.
HTH.
Julie,
I think your question is an interesting one. I’m not sure I ever thought of form as having a political context. I think there is something powerful when a writer can match the content to the right form, even when that form is free verse. I find writing to the constraint of form to be strangly freeing. 🙂
best,
ljc
I think there are conceptual problems with the way you’re talking about form. It’s as though you picture poets composing their poems in prose (or free verse), then translating them into formal modes–as you proposed to do in this one case–imposing an artificial order on an already existing piece. The giveaway is when you refer to adding “artifice” to a poem, to make it formal.
That’s not how it works, of course, and I’m sure the metaphor just got away from you. Free-verse is as “artificial” as formal; and when it’s not, it’s just bad. And formal constraints aren’t something imposed from the outside on a poem to turn it into a traditionally metrical poem. They’re there at the conception. Imagine, say, “Nothing Gold Can Stay” as a poem with the “formal” aspects removed. It wouldn’t be a free-verse version of the poem; it would just be a non-poem.
I suppose one could think of exceptions. Yeats claimed that he wrote his poems out in prose, then versified them. But I never have believed him.