Syllabics

 If you were to come across a ten-syllable lined poem, you would probably expect it to be iambic pentameter. And you would probably be right. However, regular meter is not the only possibility when creating a poem with a regular number of syllables. 

A poem with a regular number of syllables, but without meter, is known as a syllabic poem. There can be something charming in such a poem, where the regularity of the lines creates the pattern. The inclusion of other patterns--end rhymes and alliteration, for example--can bring a little more poetic order to the irregularity of the rhythms within the lines. 

Syllabics is hardly a new form for most people. Most people are familiar with the haiku, a popular Japanese form. The haiku is created by counting syllables and putting them into three lines. Five syllables, followed by seven, followed by five. (Note, a poem is only a haiku if it's a nature poem; if your 5-7-5 syllable poem isn't about nature, it's a senryu.) Thus, a haiku (or senryu) is a syllabic form. This is the case with many Chinese and Japanese forms, because of the sound structures of the languages. However, as the popularity of this form among Anglophone poets indicates, English can certainly fit well into these forms. 

How I Was Moved to Feed the Birds

The black grackle hopped

Up onto the patio

Its feet puddle-damp.

As you can see, the above is a proper haiku. If you are concerned about being too constricted by the number of syllables, you can always give it a nice, long title, as I have done with this one. Let me show you a poem in which I balance out the syllabics (10-count in this case) with rhyme:

Constructal Trees

I love the branching form of dicot trees--
Order, chaos, criticality please
The eye with expectation and a tease
Of difference. The bald cypresses have knees
That clear the water. Mangroves border seas
And branch above and below their trunks. Breeze
Brings movements to branches as their leaves seize
The air. A few have flowers, attract bees
And bats and birds and butterflies. Decrees
Are sung from their branches. We feel disease
If we're too far away from their firm lees
And their shadow darkening a few degrees
From the heat. And what other guarantees
Our air, ensuring that we do not wheeze
Through life? (Unless their pollen makes us sneeze.)
Complex beauty belongs to all of these--
We thus must always be all life's trustees.

The use of the same rhyme in each line is intended to box in the poem a little more, making up for the looseness of the syllabics. Of course, you don't have to do that at all. You can just leave it loose, which itself creates its own sonic feel:

 Rebirth

The man I was, the child I've become

Are separated by the gulf of Hell--

A sea-voyage past terrible islands,

Into storm-tosses seas of chaos--without

The benefit of the taste of Lethe.

Surrounded by black flames and spirits I

Wrestled with the Devil until I won

The right to sail from the storm and away

From the beautiful islands of joy--bliss

Blew in from the west to carry me, cold, 

Up to the rising sun creating new 

Horizons of rosy-red, orange, and gold 

Spread across the sea--evening's rainbow sea

Shining smooth in front of me in blue miles.

Nothing can be the same for me from now.

I have returned to these stone shores, reborn,

A child once again, I'm living wonder--

A child returned from graves of living men--

A child with eyes that learned to understand

In ways the man I was could never do,

Blinded by my dark, preconcepted world.

Now, I see the world I thought I knew--dark

Is light. I return to these shores, reborn. 

There are some who may, perhaps, consider this a kind of prose with line breaks (I have complained about such in the past), but the regularity of the line breaks creates a different feeling than if the line breaks were more irregular. This makes it something other than free verse. Forms are all created through regularities.

I think that syllabics are more interesting once you have mastered meter. There's a difference between creating syllabics because you want to and creating them because you don't know how to write in meter. I encourage you to work on mastering meter first, and then trying your hand at syllabics. There's a lot of potential in syllabics, but only among the most skilled at the other poetic forms. 

Bob and Wheel

 Different languages have developed different poetic traditions because of the sound structures of those languages. For example, the Germanic languages had, early on, before the influence of Latin poetry and those of the Latinate languages (especially Italian and French), been dominated by alliterative forms. 

Alliteration is, of course, the repetition of initial sounds. The Old English poem, Beowulf, and those Norse Sagas written in verse are all alliterative. There are fewer words with end rhymes in the Germanic languages than in the Latinate languages, so as a consequence, other sound patterns emerged. Further, the languages are dominated by hard consonants, so it would be natural for hard consonants in particular to emerge as a rhythmic structuring device. 

In the Latinate languages, we find a lot of end rhymes. Thus, we should not be surprised to find that there is a lot of use of end rhymes in their poetry. Latin poetry was heavily influenced by Greek poetry, which emphasized rhythms such as iambic (which the Greeks considered to be a comic rhythm). As French and Latin entered into the English language, their styles of poetry did as well. Regular rhythms emerged, as did end rhyme. But of course, these things did not just happen overnight.

Thus, after the Norman conquest of England in the 11th Century, it's not surprising that we would find transitional poetry such as that of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the 14th century. While the main part of each stanza of The Green Knight is alliterative, each also ends with what is known as a "bob and wheel," in which regular rhythms and end rhyme come into play. 

All three translations I have of The Green Knight include the bob-and-wheel, but only two--Marie Borroff's and Brian Stone's translations--attempt to alliterate throughout the work, while W.S. Merwin's does not (nor do his bob-and-wheels rhyme correctly). The latter does, however, have the original on the facing page. We'll discuss issues of translation at a later date, so I will only note that in the tension between meaning and music, some translators tend toward one over the other. 

The stanza structure in The Green Knight is approximately 15-25 alliterative lines followed by a bob-and-wheel, which has the following structure:

rhythm    rhyme     structure

u/u/           a            bob
u/u/u/        b            wheel
u/u/u/        a            wheel
u/u/u/        b            wheel
u/u/u/        a            wheel

Here is an example of Stone's translation of stanza 30, the last two alliterative lines leading into the bob-and-wheel:

And there was none but said his nay, for never in their lives

Had they set eyes on someone of such hue

        As green.

    His way was wild and strange

    By dreary hill and dean.

    His mood would many times change

    Before that fane was seen. 

I would perhaps have made "many times" "often" in order to perfect the rhythm, but you get the idea of what this structure looks like. In any case, you will note that the bob is enjambed with the last line of the alliterative portion of the stanza. This ensures the continuity of the alliterative portion with the bob-and-wheel.

I've played with this structure myself, though I created a longer bob and a shorter wheel:

        Guide Light

        In the blue is the moon, a milk mass
        Whose place is purple dawn, a pregnant
        Betrayal of time and expectation
        When the sun is supposed to be set in the sapphire
        Alone to light our lives. Who's she
                Who'll be
                So free
            Beside the sun --
            Why won't she run?

        I thought the dark was destined to draw
        Me through my life, to thread and to threaten
        In ceaseless new moon nights that would nudge
        Me graveward and grant me a gravity that death
        Couldn't strangle out of me. Still the steel,
                Reveal
                The wheel
            That turned my life
            From death's blue knife.

        But the moon that is doubling the day will dip
        Into the night enough so that nothing
        Is encompassed by the dark that has come to claim
        My mind -- she will mend my heart and move
        Me to the dawn so the devils will dance
                The lance.
                Entrance
            Me to the day
            Where I can stay.

Certainly, there are other ways you can play with the bob-and-wheel structure, or you can simply use it as originally conceived. While alliteration has gotten a bad name in English poetry for a long time, I suspect that bad name has come about from a degree of Latin-based snobbery. I think there's probably a lot of potential still in alliterative verse, especially to the degree that it draws us into the Germanic origins of English through sound. More, I think there's something charming about the bob-and-wheel structure. It's something worth playing with. What can you create using this transitional structure? How might it become a transitional structure for you? 

Concrete Poetry

 

George Herbert's "Easter Wings" is perhaps the most famous and most successful concrete poem ever created. With concrete poetry, it's the arrangement of the words on the page to create an image which is what's important--far more than the poem making sense, or any other poetic element. 

Concrete poetry goes all the way back to Ancient Greece. It should be obvious that it's a product of writing, and in many ways it truly emphasizes the ways in which writing transformed poetry. It also can be understood as part of a shift to the visual in the arts. While an oral form, rhythm and rhyme and other elements typically considered "poetic" were necessary to maintain in memory; writing allowed these rules to be loosened, for writers to play with words that sound the same but have different spellings and words that are spelled the same but have different sounds, and for the creation of images. 

But let me ask you this: is this work by Todd Camplin (yes, he's my brother) a concrete poem?

It's made up of words, but they are arranged to create different kinds of patterns, with those patterns and the colors coming to be emphasized. Yet, how different is this from other forms of concrete poetry, especially those in which there is no real meaning to the poems other than the patterns created out of the arrangement of the words?

Concrete poetry challenges the boundaries between the visual arts and the literary arts, creating meaning in the images--sometimes in addition to the meaning of the poem, sometimes despite the words themselves not seeming to have any linguistic meaning (a concrete poem of a swan that used the word "neck" in the swan's neck is clever, but does it really contribute to the meaning?). 

For my money, the real challenge in writing a concrete poem is for it to have linguistic meaning as well as visual meaning. Anyone can construct an image out of random words. Herbert is cleverer than that. And while there is something to be said for people who do things like Josep Maria Junoy in his "Ars Poetic," once it's done, it's done. You're just copying Junoy after that.

The same can be said of Louis Aragon's concrete poem "Suicide":

Aragon and Junoy are both Modernist poets, and both are clearly experimenting with a kind of poetic minimalism. The titles of each concrete poem is doing the work of creating the meaning, causing us to ask why what we see is being called "the art of poetry" or "suicide." The complete dissolution of words and letters into a pure visual field by Todd Camplin is a postmodern approach to concrete poetry, as you have no linguistic meaning whatsoever and are left with nothing but visual meaning--and even that meaning is more an appreciation of the design, as we often find in postmodern art. 

Concrete poetry can range from having linguistic meaning as well as visual meaning to a complete breakdown into pure visual meaning alone. When it no longer has linguistic meaning, though, can we truly call it a poem? Or has it become something else? And where does that line exist? Or is that line itself fuzzy? Those are all things you can investigate in creating concrete poems. 

Metamodern Poetry: A Discussion of My Book, Diaphysics

 In this interview, I discuss my book, Diaphysics*. While it's a work of philosophy, it's wide-ranging, and there is an extensive discussion of language. Since this blog is titled The Metamodern Poet, there will be a few discussions of that world view. After viewing this video, think about what these ideas might mean for poetry. How might different ways of thinking, different values, affect your poetry? My philosophical ideas may simply be a bunch of nonsense to you, and that's fine. I only hope it will stimulate thought, and if it gets a reaction of any kind, and if it stimulates the creation of poetry, then it will have done its job.

Against Authenticity

        The Journey Home by Matthew Wong

Becoming a good poet is a process. It’s a learning process. It’s a developmental process. If you are the same poet today as you were ten years ago, you haven’t grown as a human being, let alone a poet. We of course learn from our experiences, but we also learn from reading poetry (or listening to music, or viewing paintings, etc., depending on your art). 

I’ve already talked about what I call the “cult of self-expression,” but here I want to talk about the related “cult of authenticity.” 

 

In the most recent Disney version of Pinocchio, Pinocchio decides he wants to remain a marionette rather than to become a real boy, as happened in the first Disney film. This is a significant change in the story. In the first version, Pinocchio is tested and tempted (by real temptations, like alcohol and tobacco, vs. the new version), and as a result he grows and develops. Part of that development is that he becomes a real boy. It’s a justified transformation, as he has earned it. However, in the newer version, Pinocchio decides to remain his “authentic self.” Meaning, he rejects growth and development and transformation. 

 

This, in the end, is what is meant by “authenticity.” To remain “authentic” means to reject learning anything because it endangers your authentic self. It rejects moral development just as much as artistic development. You have to develop your morals and your values. Yes, we have genetic proclivities to certain moral actions and values, but that doesn't mean we're stuck with them. 

This rejection of development is at the root of the authenticity cult and the self-expression cult. You don’t have to mature, change, learn, develop, etc., because all of those will get in the way of you being authentic and engaging in self-expression. But if you have children, you know you don’t really want them to be their “authentic selves.” You want them to become better selves.

 

Our aim should, rather, be excellence. Now, excellence isn’t perfection. Perfection isn’t an option. Excellence is continual improvement of your craft (or your moral self, or your learning, or any other aspect of yourself). 

 

Nobody wants to read poetry from your “authentic self.” Your authentic self isn’t all that interesting.   Nobody wants to listen to you play “authentic” guitar, uninfluenced by anyone. That would just be a mess, chaos, noise. And that’s really what your authentic self is. Rather, you need to develop style. Your style is developed by emulating others, finding those whose style impresses you, and transforming those styles into your own through combination. This is true of all the arts, and it’s true of poetry. 

 

Authentic talent always develops within a tradition. Your tradition is not likely to be the same as another’s tradition. Someone who loves Romantic poetry is going to write quite different poems than someone who loves the Modernists, like T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and Eluard; and they will write different poems from someone who works within the postmodern tradition. As a Metamodernist poet, I work within not just these traditions, but am influenced by Japanese and Chinese poetry, Renaissance and Medieval and Ancient poetry, and various African and Latin American traditions. Obviously, then, my poetry will be different still. 

 

All of this is true of all the arts. My 10-year-old somehow understands this quite well. He is teaching himself guitar, and his musical influences are The Beatles, Nirvana, and Gorillaz. He also has tried to learn AC/DC, Queen, and Bob Dylan. He performed “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” for a school talent show. It will be interesting to see how these converse and converge to become his own style. In fact, he already plays around with creating his own compositions, and they are often quite upbeat. He will also, though, find other bands he wants to emulate, and they will provide further foundation for his style. Thus, it will evolve over time. His artistic self will develop over time, and that’s as it should be. 

 

This is what each of us should do as poets as well. I strongly encourage each and every one of you to become as broadly influenced as possible, across time and cultures. Poetry needs a renewal, and the way to do it is to embrace the entirety of the past, to embrace every tradition from the most ancient to postmodernism, and to create new things within that global frame. Each of us will find their own style, from a combination of our own personal experiences and the peculiarities of what you read, hear, and see. This is how you become part of the poetic tradition.

How a Poem is Produced

How does one write a poem? Or any work of literature, for that matter? Or, let us be less broad, still. How did I come to write this poem:

Shamanic Return

 

Where are the shamans that descend to bring

Up poetry from Hades—these new Huns

Cannot transform without the gift of art—

The world will desiccate in decadence.

 

A gold and emerald feathered serpent

To terrify us with its promises,

Convince us we must all at last repent

To gain his insights--shed, renew our souls.

 

One must descend in order to receive

The gift that will transform the pain and strife

We find ourselves in—we must now believe

In a new culture that believes in life. 

 

The shaman's poetry will heal the rift

That's poisoning our culture—that's his gift.

 
As you can see, in this poem, the form evolves from a blank verse quatrain to a ABAC rhyme scheme in the second, to a ABAB rhyme scheme in the third (yes, I’m ignoring the fact that I should be starting with the first end-word of the poem being A, but this is to make a broader point).The last six lines are thus structured as a Shakespearean sonnet, with the forst two quatrains showing an evolution toward that form, from blank verse to two rhymes, then the full four and the rhyming couplet. 

 

In other words, this poem is influenced by the form we call the Shakespearean sonnet. We call it this although the form was invented by Surrey. And Surrey modified Spencer, who modified the original Italian sonnet, which we call the Petrarchan sonnet, though it was actually invented by Giacomo di Lentini. So, the form of the sonnet I chose was due to the influence of Shakespeare on me, but we can see that there is a tradition of the sonnet as a form going back to di Lentini—and not just going back in time, but into another country, language, and culture.

Further, the Shakespearean sonnet is somewhat different from the other sonnet forms. While the Petrarchan sonnet's form creates a tension in the two quatrains that is released in the sextet, the Spencerian sonnet's form creates a tension between the emotional and the analytic,  and the Shakespearean sonnet's form creates a tension between thesis and antithesis that gets resolved in the couplet and is thus more analytical/intellectual. Form informs theme, and vice versa. Thus did the form of the Shakespearean sonnet suggest itself in the writing of the poem. In this case, there was an evolution in the poem from “chaos”—no rhyme—to increasing rhyming order. All of this reflects the theme of the poem itself. (Note: the topic chose the form; I did not, in any conscious way, choose the form before the topic.)

As I am sure with practically everyone else, I became exposed to the sonnets of Shakespeare—and any number of more recent sonneteers of more recent vintage—in high school and college. Even though I only started writing poems in the last of my undergraduate years, and although I only started writing formal verse on any sort of regular basis after meeting Frederick Turner while working on my Ph.D., I was certainly not unaware of the existence of sonnets, and there is little doubt that there was influence from those sonnets even before I wrote my first sonnet—or began writing them regularly.

Of course, all of the poems I have read over the years have helped to direct my general poetic tastes and tendencies—toward and away from particular styles, topics, etc. And not just poems. My interests have developed in fictional prose, epics, essays, nonfiction books, etc. My interests in social issues, in complexity, in economics and governance, in human nature, in neuroscience and psychology, in philosophy, etc. have all contributed to the content which appears in any number of my poems. One would have to trace the genealogies of each of those interests to me to understand the context in which I write.

And not just that. There are contexts not only of what I have read, but of my experiences and of my culture. My frustration at the degree to which the literary arts in general, and poetry in particular, are not considered to have much value in this culture, for example, is expressed in the poem. A recognition that there is a belief that poetry doesn't "do anything" by people in this culture—meaning, since they don't think it does anything, it doesn't and cannot do anything—is also there. 

 

If we take a look at another poem—this one a full Shakespearean sonnet, as it turns out—we will see that these concerns recur in my poetry:

On Censorship

 

Is poetry important? Yours is not

If no one wants to censor you or burn

Your manuscripts. If no one wants them hot

Off the presses and no one will spurn

Your verse, then it is unimportant. Death

Comes early to the dangerous who dare

To challenge worlds. Your long life and your breath

Condemn your frivolous words. We don't care.

But if you say the meaningful and break

The colored glasses that we wear, you'll see

Your words for their importance. When a lake

Of blood is spilled for words, then you'll agree

That arts' and humanities' import

Is such that only fools would dare abort.

 

Further, I suggest in this poem that there are obviously cultures that encourage people to think the arts do in fact do something. Why else would they have censorship laws? From this, there is a question of whether it is our long history of freedom of speech which has thoroughly defanged literature. (Which could further raise the question in a discussion of this poem of whether it’s worth losing poetry to gain freedom—which it would hard to argue against.)

In my poem, I essentially argue that our literature has become thoroughly defanged. Poetry is dominated by kitsch—it is primarily self-congratulatory in nature, demonstrating how wonderfully anti-racist, -sexist, -etc. one is to others who are very proud of their own PC credentials. It’s just preaching to the choir (yes, sometimes we in the choir do need to hear the message that we’re the chosen ones going to heaven and that our enemies are all hell-bound, but it's no way to get converts). There is nothing truly shocking or edgy—everything is only mock-shock. "Look, I have the word 'penis' in my poem!"—knowing looks all around. Blah-blah-blah-boring.

You know that today’s poetry isn't shocking because everyone who writes it is sitting around, as cool and comfortable as cucumbers in their plush offices, not in the least bit concerned that someone might read it who could threaten that comfort in the least.

If you write something that truly matters, you'll truly rile people up. But who is writing that poetry?

These are the thoughts—the contemporary thoughts, embedded in our contemporary American culture, in light of the fact that there are other cultures in which poets live truly dangerous lives—that underlie this poem. So, we not only need a cultural context, but a comparative culture context, a global context. We have to understand my interests and concerns. We have to understand my world view and understanding of human nature. We have to know my poetic genealogy. All of which I have, quite frankly, dealt with superficially here. To truly write about the context necessary for the poem in question to have been created, one would need to write a book. And one would have to not rely on me for the full meaning of each of these poems. 

And that gets us to the true complexity of a work of art like a poem. To understand a poem, you have to not only understand the person in question—at the time of the writing of the poem—but also the social context that helped to create that mind. That is, we have to understand the mind as extended beyond the emergent processes of the embodied brain in action. We have to understand all of the spontaneous orders involved, and the particular subnetworks within each that lead to the emergence of the poem from the poet. And we have to understand it not only in the social context in which it was written, but in the social context in which it’s presently being read, and based on the responses of numerous other readers across time and cultures. 

 

And this, too, is how one writes a poem. It is an emergent property of the poet’s influences, knowledge, wisdom, ignorance, foolishness, seriousness, world view, sense of humor, etc., combined with one’s skills in writing. Of course, the last thing you should be doing is thinking about any of these things as you write—other than, of course, writing skills, sounds, patterns, rhythms, and all the other things that contribute to the art of poetry. 

Constrained and Unconstrained Poets

 The economic way of thinking begins with understanding that human choice is all walks of life is always exercised against a background of constraints.

The reality of choice within constraints implies that we face trade-offs in making decisions.

Peter Boettke, Living Economics, pg. 22

F. A. Hayek argues that there are two kinds of individualism, one which embraces the "constrained vision" and the other which embraces the "unconstrained vision." Those who believe humans are constrained believe we are naturally social and that there are evolved rules that restrict how humans can act and interact with each other. Those who believe human are unconstrained believe human beings are infinitely malleable, that we can be socially constructed into anything. The former Hayek identifies with the "tragic sense of life." The poet Frederick Turner identifies it with the development of a “culture of hope.” The latter is embraced by the avant-garde of the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

In poetry, the constrained vision is clearly accepted by the formalists. Of course, I have already argued elsewhere that all poetry—including free verse poetry—is built upon constraints, but formalist poets make those constraints more consciously-chosen. What we could call “unconstrained poets” would be those who write in free verse, but also in avant-garde styles such as dadaism, surrealis, and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, among others. 

Free verse poets tend to believe constraints restrict their freedom. Free verse poetry and many of the experiments of literary modernism and postmodernism were attempts at shedding constraints—and were quite often attempts to deny the natural existence and validity of constraints. In their ideal of “automatic writing,” surrealism attempted to deny the validity of making a decision—or at least, conscious decisions—and therefore attempted to create an "act" without decision, direction/goal, or structure. The surrealist artists all considered themselves to be the artistic expression of Marxism, and Marxism is certainly a version of the unconstrained vision of man.

Formalist poets understand that constraints are not necessarily restricting, but rather that they are a necessary condition for freedom. The world is full of constraints, and interesting rules/constraints can create new possibilities you may not have thought of had you been writing a free verse poem. In a certain sense, then a sonnet thus makes one more entrepreneurial, because you have to be alert to new possibilities, because you have constraints in what you can say next (or, in revision, perhaps what you said before). In formalist poetry there are a number of constraints that can force you to make choices—many more choices than you would have to make in free verse, for example.

Of course, not all constraints are the same. There are natural and imposed constraints. There are internally-imposed and externally-imposed constraints. There are predictable and unpredictable constraints. Formalist poetry embraces a combination of natural (rhythms and rhymes) and imposed (this or that particular rhyme scheme or rhythm), internally imposed (by our choices) and externally imposed (by our traditions, within which we necessarily work), and predictable (in a heroic couplet the last word of the second line necessarily rhymes with the first) and unpredictable (having to rhyme may send the writer—and, subsequently, the reader—into a different direction than (s)he first thought the poem was going). But note that the formalist poet is making use of both simultaneously and is not using one at the expense of the other. 

Many of the modernist and postmodernist avant-garde writers insisted that they were rejecting the artificiality of formalism and embracing a more "natural" kind of poetry. The surrealists thought they were being natural, unpredictable, and internal, for example. There was an assumption that nature was chaotic/unpredictable—and that man imposed (and should impose) order from the outside. Self-organization theory helps us to see that a kind of predictable-unpredictable, internal-external natural order can exist, that no external orderer is necessary in nature, or in society. Thus, a good formalist poem is much more like a self-organizing natural system than is a surrealist poem. Neither is more natural than the other, but one could perhaps argue that the former embraces more aspects of reality than does the latter.

On the other hand, one can go in the other direction and have externally imposed, predictable art—but this is propaganda and/or is a product of censorship. In the visual arts, Futurism tried to embrace the completely "imposed"/non-natural. Language, being a spontaneous order itself, always necessarily embodies both elements, making a purely "unnatural" poetry all but impossible—except perhaps in various Dadaist experiments. 

This suggests, then, that the kinds of poetry flourishing at a given time are likely to reflect the way the poets understand the world—as being naturally constrained or naturally unconstrained. Does this mean there are more formalist poets with the tragic view of life? Does this mean that free verse poets are more optimistic about humans being able to design the world? Perhaps. One would expect to see this in the world views they express in their art. 

 

As we learn more and more about the world, we learn that the world is in fact full of constraints, that there is a power in limits, and that these elements of the world are what have led to ever-greater complexity and order in the cosmos. Does this mean the formalist poets are the one who “got it right”? Hardly. There are plenty of areas in our cultures and societies in which we can and do consciously structure our environments—not the least of which being businesses, legislation, and our organizations. And these are necessary. The free verse poets have their place, and the formalists have their place. Each contributes, and each finds their own kinds of freedoms. 

 

Each poet must find their voice, and each, I think, can only find their voice by experimenting across the different forms and various versions of free verse and avant-garde poetry. What you end up choosing, though, might say a great deal more about your world view than perhaps you realized.