What is Poetic Form?

When your favorite band comes out with a CD, what do you buy first: the actual CD, or the sheet music?   If you are a musician, you want both the CD and the sheet music, sure.   But at the least, you want to hear the sounds of the songs, feel them in your belly, bring them alive in your ears and sonic imagination.   The same is true of that type of song we call "poetry."   If you only read the words of the poem for what they say rather than how they say it, then you are trying to listen to your favorite song only by reading the sheet music.

What is Poetic Form?

 

 

OK, but What is Poetic Form?

OK, but What is Poetic Form?

Poetic form is a poem's involvement with different types of meter, rhyme, and stanza structure.   Try not to think of poetic forms as ornaments on a Christmas tree. Instead, try to think about how form and function work hand-in-hand in a poem, as they do in a piece of architecture.

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We All Want Pleasure

Remember that poets, like any artists, rarely wake up and say, "I want less freedom and pleasure, so I think I'll restrict myself with form."   A poet's choice of form usually cannot be separated from what that poet is trying to say or do.   Form in a poem takes the shape of what the poet desires, and what the poet imagines readers desire.   Form in a poem puts restrictions on what the poet can say or do. Form in a poem restricts movement and makes new movements possible. Just like how a stage restricts movement for performers—and makes new movement possible.   Robert Frost once said that writing without form is "like playing tennis without a net."

We All Want Pleasure