All poetry has form.
Edward Hirsch likens a poem’s form to a human’s body—a necessary physical incarnation of spirit. But how does one go about finding the appropriate form for a particular poem? Mary Oliver asserts, “I believe content determines form, and yet that content is discovered only in form. Like everything living, it is a mystery.”
To address this mystery, let’s take a practical look at free verse vs. formal poetry.*
Free Verse
Mary Oliver reminds us that free verse poetry “is by no means exempted from the necessity of having a design.” Ron Padget also warns that free verse does not mean a free-for-all: “It means that every poet who writes in this form must work to create his or her own rules.”
Both these experts emphasize free verse poetry’s lines—line lengths, line breaks, spacing between lines, repetition of lines. What do these choices achieve when a reader first sees the poem? As the reader reads the poem? Oliver speaks of repetition of patterns in syntax, patterns of stress or rhythm, how a poet can build up expectations and then either fulfill them or pull the rug from under the reader’s feet. Each of these choices will vary in each free verse poem, but internally, they should have intent and logic.
Study brilliant free verse poems and ask yourself WHY-WHY-WHY? Why does the poet establish specific patterns? Why does the poet break them?
John Murillo recommends Lucille Clifton’s “miss rosie” for such an exercise. Look at the line lengths, capitalization, repetitions… WHY-WHY-WHY? All of the poet’s choices do work. All of your free verse choices should do work—they should guide the reader in your absence.
“So, free verse offers no excuse for sloppy writing,” Padget concludes. “In fact, it demands more of the poet, because her or she must question every word, test the shape and sound of every line, and be able to defend the choices made.”
Formal Poetry
“Form is a straightjacket,” Justin Quinn proclaims, “in the way that a straightjacket was a straightjacket for Houdini.”
Mark Strand & Eavan Boland open their Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms by stating, “For many people what is off-putting about poetic form is the belief, sometimes based on an unlucky class or exam, that these are cold and arbitrary rules, imposed to close out readers rather than include them.” They and Edward Hirsch, editor of the 700-page tome A Poet’s Glossary, beg to differ.
They explain that poetic forms around the world were developed and honed over generations by skilled artists to express diverse aspects of humanity—language, voice, music, culture, emotional needs, political and aesthetic movements—whether in concert with the establishment or in opposition to it. The exploration of these forms can be a type of time travel, a way to experience the breadth of human communication and art. Boland reminds us that poetic forms “are not abstract, but human,” stressing their diversity and multiplicity of their purposes. They are not “imposed” rules, but something organic, “rooted,” which will “liberate and not constrain.”
But established forms do require study. Stephen Dunn advises, “Think of learning [poetic forms] as acquiring the tools of your trade, which you may or may not choose to employ. A carpenter doesn’t always use a drill, though it would be disastrous for him not to know it exists.”
Learn your tools, and then employ the appropriate tool for the appropriate task. Want to capture a snapshot of a moment along with its insight? A haiku might be the right tool. Want the poignancy of a haiku, but with a little more room for commentary? Try a waka/tanka. Perhaps you need to drive home a sense of inescapable repetition, or explore how repeated elements intertwine and interrelate. Have you studied the pantoum? Wish to juxtapose a diversity of concise images and experiences loosely linked by a repeated rhyme or word or refrain? The answer could be a ghazal.
Whichever form you use, it should support and enrich the content of your poem. If you are forcing words or rhymes or rhythms in boxes they simply don’t fit, consider a different form.
There are innumerable resources on poetic forms available to teach you the tools of your trade—websites, books, YouTube videos. I recommend studying multiple sources when researching a form, as well as reading numerous (diverse) examples. If you wish to learn about a form from a culture not your own, try to include commentaries and examples from that culture.
Formal poetry need not be limiting. Hirsch reminds us that “the devices work the magic in poetry.” Explore that magic.
Innovation and Subversion of Established Forms
In his Redress of Poetry, Seamus Heaney states, “In any movement towards liberation, it will be necessary to deny the normative authority of the dominant language or literary tradition.”
Poets have always subverted, converted, played with, and innovated forms—none so much as contemporary American poets. While it is natural for poets from historically marginalized cultures to reject the “canonical” forms of the cultures who oppress them, many, such as Carl Phillips, argue that claiming and/or changing a form “is how to make it one’s own… I’m using what’s been handed down to me, but to my own purposes…a conversation that insists on the inclusion of my language…my refusal to be invisible…”
In the recent renaissance of formal poetry, anti-establishment poets are leading the charge. Patricia Smith, who famously began her career winning poetry slams with her spoken word masterpieces, also publishes poems that “include, but are not limited to the dramatic monologue, the political elegy, the sonnet, the ghazal, the golden shovel…” (Terrance Hayes). Her brilliant 2021 crown of sonnets, “Nap Unleashed,” is a tour de force of the form.
Terrance Hayes, the creator of the golden shovel form as well as forms involving such devices as anagrams, has famously reshaped the traditional sonnet, replacing “conventional rhyme schemes with much denser sonic arrangements, often untethered line ends [and] midline rhymes…. He’s also inverting traditional stories about power and tragedy in the making of lyric poems” (Stephanie Burt).
The sonnet form seems to invite innovation. Lisa L. Moore states, “The form invites complexity and contradiction because ‘sonnets can think.’ This is precisely [what gives] the sonnet its political force.” Phillips discusses how the “restless” form of the sonnet with its ever-shifting rhymes, its volta, the rebellious little couplet, invites revolution.
Look up Jericho Brown’s sonnet “Independence” (and/or Nate Marshall’s “African American Literature” if you can’t handle strong language). Examine how they both use and subvert the traditional form to startling effect.
If your poem’s content demands tension, contradiction, reversals, subversion, deconstruction, innovation, taking and making a traditional form your own might be the answer. But, again, be sure your choices guide or challenge your reader with intent.
Final Thoughts
Whether you choose to write/submit formal poetry or free verse, be sure the content of your work is in genuine conversation with its form. And be sure the content of your poem is poetry.
As Lucille Clifton reminds us, “Poems come out of wonder, not out of knowing.” A poem should be a journey, an exploration, often with unexpected (if not for the author, at least for the reader) shifts and turns. The volta of a sonnet, the twist in a haiku or sijo… The unexpected juxtaposition of images, the multiple-reading created by a clever line break… The best poetry is free of cliché and predictability. And free of mere self-focus.
If you wish to preach (unless, perhaps, it is preaching to power), write a sermon. If you wish to tell a simple story, write a simple narrative. “A poem means itself. You create something, rather than define it” (Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill). As Andrew Johnson rather poetically explains, “The poem is both the winding road and the wild horse that gallops past us as we read, so that when we come around the last bend, there it is, waiting for our shock of recognition.”
Above all, revise your poems until each word and punctuation mark and space and break and choice does the work it needs to do, serving the content. “Poetry is…speech in which the words come in an order which could not be changed without ruining the verity and power of the whole,” according to Robert Nye.
“Poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing.”
—James Tate
*For thoughts on Bacopa’s other poetry category, see my co-editor Oliver Keyhani’s excellent blog post, “Visual Poetry: A Dynamic Interplay.”
Resources:
The American Sonnet, Dora Malech & Laura T. Smith, eds.
The Bloodaxe Book of Poetry Quotations, ed. Dennis O’Driscoll
“The End of the Line: Terrance Hayes and Formal Innovation” (Kenyon Review, 12/22/2016)
Handbook of Poetic Forms, ed. Ron Padgett
The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, Mark Strand & Eavan Boland
A Poetry Handbook, by Mary Oliver
A Poet’s Glossary, by Edward Hirsch
“The Politics and Play of Terrance Hayes” by Dan Chiasson (New Yorker, 7/2/18)
The Redress of Poetry, by Seamus Heaney
Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry, W. N. Herbert & Matthew Hollis, eds.
Watch Your Language, by Terrance Hayes
“Voluntary Imprisonment” by Stephanie Burt (Slate, 5/28/19)
