Plunging into the work of John Berryman this semester has provided me with a newly discovered appreciation of poetic form. If you had asked me earlier, I would have written it off--no doubt partly due to my own ignorance of it, but also, because I thought it was something archaic and long past in relevance.
Indeed, I agree with what Davidson and Fraser say in Writing Poetry that, especially in the outset of writing, to remain "committedly detached" from form and to "ride your drafts." Of course this is sage advice and promotes a wonderfully freeing writing environment. However, the authors also admit that to wholly ignore form would be, borrowing from Frost, "like playing tennis without a net." Ok, got it. Dig it. "Discover" form instead of writing 'into' it.
However, I also recall a class from a few weeks back where we discussed the imperative of writing everyday--possibly in relation to The Triggering Town, where Hugo mentions the famous Jack Nicholas quotation: "the more I practice, the luckier I get." In the same conversation, I also recall the mention of a Miles Davis quotation, which I located online: "When I am working on a piece of music, I will study the music, I will learn the music. Maybe that is what I meant when I said there is some kind of formal aspect to this, so I learn the melody, the chord progression, in preparation for my instrumental improvisation. Now when I improvise after learning formally these things, I forget them. I don't go up on the stage and think of them. I forget them and that is where the creativity comes in." I can totally relate to this as a musician. In fact, as a trained guitarist, the point at which I "forgot" my training, was the moment that I felt my creativity multiply infinitely.
So, while I'm reading Berryman, Lowell, Bishop--those confessionalists that gave a sardonic pat on the proverbial rear to the New Critics--I feel like I need to know about form, which I am embarrassingly ignorant of. Furthermore, in my own writing--while I feel I can grasp the "musicality" of words, I am but an novice. I feel I need to know these things, not only to watch how my favorite poets work in tthis sort of "give and take" with form, but also so I can ascribe it to my own writing--to see how I can, also, work with poetic form. It'll be a bit of catch-up game. Sign me up.
I've been thinking a great deal about your post, Brian, which is quite eloquent. When I studied with Bruce Bond, he had a wonderful retort to Frost's frumpy quip about poetry without form like tennis without a net. He said, "Tennis without a net can also be fun; you just have to invent new rules."
ReplyDeleteOr what about this analogy from music and art pedagogy (both of which are closely related to poetry pedagogy): It's certainly not uncommon for a music teacher to say, "Learn this song note for note. Copy it." Same goes for art: "Mimic this painter's style." We learn, in other words, by imitating. Why can't we adopt that in poetry. Shouldn't we try that? Let's.
Next week, let's use our calisthenic to "write like John Berryman." He seems the perfect exemplar, since his style is so idiosyncratic and easily aped.
What say you?