The American poet, Robert Frost once remarked that "writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down,'" and "no verse is free for the poet who wants to do a good job." Most poetry that's considered free verse still works with rhythm, internal rhyme, metre and other structuring devices. Poetry that's in a particular form functions according to more codified rules. Form can be a teacher, a mode of channeling, and an aid to memory, imbuing poetry with a more powerful music.
The History of Form Poetry
Form has always been a part of poetry. Repeating patterns of rhyme, metre and alliteration were particularly important in oral cultures. Anglo Saxon forms, for instance, are rich with alliteration, while Inuit or Native forms, as well as folk ballads, feature regular repetition of images or lines.
Form enabled the poet to remember their piece while reciting it. Form also assisted in creating audience participation and in weaving magic with language. Forms like the ghazal from 9th century Persia were communal, while forms like the haiku and tanka from ancient Japan were more intimate structures. Traditionally, no poetry was written without the incorporation of form.
The Importance of Form
Form poetry can often be viewed as an overly conventional or potentially clicheed style of writing. Using form is frequently disdained by post modernist or avant garde poets. Form is more flexible, versatile and integral to poetry though than many writers think.
Form Can Be a Teacher
Writing sonnets, villanelles, sestinas or many other forms instructs the poet on the connection of form to content. The rules of form aren't random. They have a history connected to their substance. For instance, the sonnet frequently features themes of love or death with a turn of perception represented by the last two lines. The villanelle is perfect for a deeper comprehension of memory with its recurring first and third lines. The ghazal mirrors a state of inebriation, confusion, despair, or existential questioning with its swift turns between couplets.
Even if the writer doesn't want to publish their form poetry, practicing forms will improve discipline and train the ear. The more adept one becomes at form, the more one can bend the rules and play with the structure.
Form Can Help Channel Subject Matter
Deciding how best to express content can be a challenge. Writing in a chosen form can focus subject matter in surprising and powerful ways. Needing to follow a rhyme scheme or a pattern of repetition, syllables or stresses can structure the content and free one from the uncertainties of its containment.
For example, knowing that stanzas must have the end rhymes ababcdcdefefgg (a Shakespearean sonnet form), makes the content falls into place more easily. At the same time, following the form allows for mystery and risk taking; fulfilling the rules may lead the writer to insights they wouldn't have otherwise arrived at.
Form Can Improve One's Memory
When you recite your poetry, you will be better able to recall its structure and aural patterns if you write in form. You will be able to engage more directly with your audience, spending less time looking down at your book or papers. Your poetry will become easier for your readers to memorize too, thus increasing the importance of poetry's place in everyday life, outside the pages of a book.
The poems will sing more in the blood, partaking in what Thoreau referred to as breath and the body's rhythms. Form can concentrate the word-music in your poems, drawing listeners and marking the uniqueness of poetry as a genre separate from prose.
Catherine Owen - Catherine Owen, MA 2001, has published ten award winning books of poetry/prose. Her writing is lyrical, well-researched and fully ...
Join the Conversation