World Class Poetry Blog

Form Is Just Another Element Of Poetic Craft
4 March 2008, the poet @ 10:02 pm

This is the third part in the Millennial Poetics series. Parts 1 and 2 can be read prior to this one at

Poetic Craft (Millennial Poetics, Part 1)
and No Room For Prejudice (Millennial Poetics, Part 2)

Return here when you finish reading the first two posts. The rest of the series of posts on Millennial Poetics include:

1. Craft is of utmost importance
2. There is no room for prejudice
3. Form is just another element of craft
4. Creativity and craft go hand in hand
5. No topic is taboo
6. There is no such thing as language that is too archaic
7. All poems are individuals
8. There is no acceptable method to writing poetry
9. All convention should be shunned

Form Is Just Another Element Of Poetic Craft
Formalist poets tend to place form at the helm of the poetic pyramid. As their moniker suggests, poetry should not be written outside of form. Free verse poets, on the other hand, tend to shun form at all costs. In fact, with few exceptions, postmodern poets wouldn’t be caught dead writing within a form. Millennial poetics rejects both extremes.

Form is not the most important aspect of craft, nor is it a bane. It is simply another element of craft to be considered. Like rhyme, meter, assonance, metaphor, and other poetic elements in the arsenal of the well-versed poet, form is one more consideration.

The poet must select a form for every poem he writes. There is no such thing as rejection of form. Free verse poets are writing in form. It’s just that the form is a non-traditional form. The form is free verse. Prose poets are writing in prose form. Many poets do not see free verse and prose as poetic forms, but they are. They are forms unto themselves. Therefore, every poet writes in form and every poem has a form.

The difference between a good poet and a bad poet, or an effective poet and an ineffective poet, is that one is conscious of form and chooses the form out of careful consideration and the other is not conscious of form at all. The poet must be aware of form at all times and choose the form that is best for the poem. That is not as easy as it sounds.

The poet should not be afraid to experiment. Learning new forms is encouraged. Modifying existing forms is also allowed. There is no reason why every sonnet must adhere to the Petrarchan rhyme scheme. What if you took the sonnet and modified it so that the metrical structure and rhyme scheme appeared as

a
b
b
ab
a
a
ba
b

and instead of calling it a sonnet you called it a sonnette because it is a shortened version of the traditional sonnet while adhering to the basic structure?Poetic Form Has No Limitations
There are no limitations to form and structure in poetry. The only rule is that it must make sense within the self-established rules of the poem that is being written. If you try to write a sonnet and you get stuck, try to write a sestina instead. Or if you are not satisfied with how your rondeau turned out, rewrite it as a villannelle.Sometimes, subject matter determines your form. A limerick obviously would not be a limerick if it had 24 lines and didn’t rhyme. But you can take a limerick and add a line then call it something else. Why not? Every form at some point was someone’s invention. The first person to ever write a sonnet paved a new trail. Why couldn’t you pave one as well?

Let your poem speak in its own voice. Listen to that voice. Your poem may be wanting to go in a certain direction and may naturally lead you to places you never thought you’d go. Many poets try to force their poems into the forms that they know, but they do not have the experience and skill necessary to make it fit. That doesn’t mean you can’t write a good poem. It just means that you need to study more and listen to the poem’s voice. Every poem has its own voice and story to be told. The experienced poet knows when to listen to that and let the poem write itself.

Poetry is, above all things, experimentation. It is playing with words. It is taking what is not there and molding it into something that will always be there. Let the reader find their own poem in yours. Every idea does not need to be spelled out completely. Leave something to your readers’ imaginations, but give them enough clues to be able to figure out what you are trying to do in your poem. The best poems, not matter what form they are written in, get better with each subsequent reading. If you listen to your poems then you will find that yours grow into a life of their own within the forms that they choose for themselves.

Read the next post in the series

2 Comments a “Form Is Just Another Element Of Poetic Craft”

1. Jim Murdoch — March 5, 2008 @ 10:44 am
   

   Thirty-one years ago I wrote a poem called ‘Stray’. It was my 453rd poem and I’ve always regarded it as the first adult poem I ever wrote. I’d had a few poems published before that one but I learned something very important from it. After I was happy with the words I began shoving them around on the page until I had two stanzas with a 6-5-4-3-6-5 rhythm. THAT was the natural shape of the poem.

   Every single poem I’ve written since then has been examined in the same way and almost every one has a shape. My last poem, my 990th, has three stanzas with a 2-5-7-7-7-5 shape; the previous one has five stanzas of 6-6-6, the one before that a single stanza with a 4-4-4-4-4-4 shape.

   I never start off with a clue how the poem will look which is why, other than the few haiku I attempted before I realised they did not need to be a in a 5-7-5 shape, I have never tried my hand at sonnets or villanettes or anything convoluted like that.

2. the poet — March 5, 2008 @ 2:59 pm
   

   Jim, I’m impressed that you number your poems. I’ve never done that. I don’t have any idea how many poems I’ve written. None whatsoever.

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