[A] de-emphasis in the academy in recent years on the formal elements of poetry, in favor of the social, legal, historic, and cultural background to literature, has meant that even doctoral candidates in English need not concern themselves overly with poetic form. Another quick but, I think, telling example: I was serving on a panel of poetry judges, and as the panel proceeded to deliberate, one judge, a university professor and poet, chimed in to say that I and another of our colleagues seemed to be paying a lot of attention to the language in the poems. It was never entirely clear to me what was meant by this statement, but I suspect that the implication was that, in carefully examining a poet’s deployment of words, I had failed to give proper weight to the poet’s biography as it was suggested by the poems. —David Yezzi —The Fortunes of Formalism (New Criterion)
I teach blank verse (iambic pentameter), and required my Intro to Literary Study students to write sonnets. The poets in the class overwhelmingly prefer free verse, but enough “got into” the exercises that I consider the experience a success.
I’m a much better poetry editor than a poet. When I do write verse, it’s solely to play with form. That’s almost the opposite of the student poets whose feeling gush forth into their keyboards.
Students in my upper-level Media Aesthetics class have started exchanging glances and smirking every time I bring up T.S. Eliot — a formalist who knew the rules well enough to break them to pieces when he needed to. (“Wallala leialala” anyone?)
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You're right about practice and time... when beginning poets think of their hastily dashed-off poems as artifacts from a particular time -- "the poem I wrote when I broke up with my boyfriend/girlfriend," it's hard to get them to think in terms of revision.
One of the difficulties I notice is that some students write poetry lyrics as if they are writing song lyrics. In their heads, they hear the half notes and the quarter notes, so they accellerate or slow down their words in order to fit the meter. But when I read their poetry, I don't have access to the mental "soundtrack" that helped them decide that one two-syllable word should count as one beat, while another two-syllable word should be counted as two beats. So this term, the only poetry I asked them to do was sonnets. (But several still post their own their blogs anyway, which is a good sign.)
Oh, and I forgot to say that form for form's sake is rather empty, as well. Just as free verse relies on an assumption about "organic" expression so too does formal verse depend on an assumption about "structure". But I think the content should play into the formal choices a writer makes. A poem about the Holy Trinity, for example, would make for a good "triolet". Etc.
Sad, but true. Creative writing courses and textbooks have steered away from lyrical forms to a large degree -- but not all of them. Still, they're difficult to teach and students often moan in agony about writing them when they're mandatory (though many get into it). One of the issues is that they take a lot of practice to "get right" -- and that's hard to accomplish in one semester. Another issue is that so much formal poetry is bad by early writers...while their free verse still manages to accomplish something (though not always -- often that's a screen). I think the MAIN problem with formal approaches is that there isn't an audience out there who appreciates them, whether written or spoken. It's a huge culture shift. That doesn't stop me from teaching it, though. The trick with all hard material is making it enjoyable and fun. It's do-able. Thanks posting this article; I may very well actually use it in my poetry writing course!
-- Mike Arnzen