Poetic Form

I like poetic form, with meter and stuff like that. I'm a "formalist", as people say nowadays (the older word was "poet"). We live in a free verse age, so I'm out of the mainstream--although near enough to have plenty of company.

Formalism is a matter of taste. Some formalists like to challenge the taste of the mainstream, perhaps hoping to change it. To challenge is also a matter of taste. For my part, I don't particularly care. Let the mainstream flow where it will. If you do care, I suggest that talking about it is not your first job. Vote with your feet!

There is a formalist movement (or more than one, if you want to look at it that way), called New Formalism, or Expansivism. I don't see myself as belonging to it; I am an independent. For my take on New Formalism, see the following Daily Whale entries:

• New Formalist Manifesto, First Draft
• Second Draft
• Final Version

The last one, "Final Version", is also available here, in a slightly revised form, under the title New Formalists.

Free Verse

"Rhythm must have meaning." -- Ezra Pound

Verse is never free, at least not if it's any good. In a manner of speaking, every poet is a formalist, because every poem has a form. I think most people understand that. So I reason that the current purpose of the term "free verse" is to obscure the nature of free verse by refusing to draw distinctions among its varieties.

That can't be healthy.