Storytellersunplugged

by David Niall Wilson

(Since we don’t seem to be quite on line with Lucius yet, I’m posting this — maybe of interest. It was originally published a few years ago in the HWA Newsletter)There are a lot of fundamental questions associated with poetry. Some of these questions are so basic they challenge the foundation of modern verse as a relevant art form, or seem to – others are completely subjective and require a different approach. I want to look at a very simple division in the poetic form that has deepened over the years into a chasm. The question is, is poetry a romantic art form, or a classic art form - and can it be both

The classical philosophy would view the poem as an object. It has a form, rules that govern that form, a purpose, and these qualities can be measured, or at least judged, through the application of reason. Meter and rhyme can be tested and found to meet the rules set forth in the form, or discarded as falling short of the model. This way of looking at poetry is currently in disfavor among most poets. The rules and structures are seen as impediments. The aesthetic qualities of the images presented are considered to be restrained in ways that block some purer form, spawned from a freestyle spontaneity.

The Romantic philosophy would describe the poem as subjective to the object of inspiration. In other words, the images and emotions behind the poetry are quantified by the re-creation in words. Romantic poetry, in this sense, is a very sudden art form, whose structure is dictated by the moment and the inspiration, rather than fitting that same inspiration into a previously defined and refined structure. This second philosophy is the current ruling school of thought, and has been so since somewhere around the early 1960’s. Since then, it has grown in strength, as the classical forms have diminished.

In high schools and universities, analysis of creative form is the preferred method of teaching poetry, or any other form of Rhetoric. The body of work that has stood the test of time is broken down surgically, analyzed, quantified, and found to meet the tenets of rule and form. Then, from the rules extrapolated by this analysis, students are directed to create their own works, following these rules and within these forms. Unfortunately for the classic forms of poetry, literature rarely breaks down in this manner to be raised again like Lazarus. The fact is that, while classical poets followed certain structures, the rules themselves were recorded and applied long after the fact. With the specter of insufficient metaphor, unsyncopated meter and the limits of imaginative rhyme glaring over your shoulder, it’s damned hard to be eloquent.

This has led to a tangential surge into other forms. Newer forms. We now have classic forms, the sonnet, and the haiku – and we have non-linear forms. Free verse. Spoken word dialogue, and even less-structured, more abstract forms. Notice the use of the word forms.

A scream is a very short, very intense experience, both for the person screaming, and anyone within close proximity. To translate that scream to poetry in the modern form would be a swift chiseling of the words that shift most quickly to the center of the mind. The words may seem staccato, short and incomplete, but they convey the scream. They fulfill their purpose. Upon immediate examination, the poet may well sit back, smile and say “Wow,” or something similar. The scream will be as they remember it, vivid and sudden.

A classic poet might take that experience of the scream in a different direction. Time would pass. The experience would be sifted through other experiences. Images would arise from the meeting of one image with the next until a rhythm emerged. Classic style poetry is an art of patterns. The pattern is natural to the poet, though it may seem coarse and difficult to those around him. The pattern will draw the words into place, and if the poet is careful, and strict with his own imagery, those words will fit into place like the bits and pieces of an intricate puzzle. The images he can paint with these words will be similar to those evoked by the work of the Romantic style poet, but more subtle.

Of course, not all free verse is sudden, or spontaneous. A Romantic style poet, using my own definition of this style, can spend hours lingering over one word, or one line, just as his counterpart on the Classic side pores over a rhymed couplet. If the poetry is true to the poet’s intent, it can be a nerve-wracking experience. Prose offers the buffer of sentence structure and descriptive paragraphs. Poetry offers only enough room for words that matter. Classical poetry is unforgiving in its structure. Romantic poetry is unforgiving in it’s necessity of standing without the support of accepted structure.

And still we have the question - is there a place for the classic styles of poetry in modern literature? Has the time for following known structures passed us by, and given way to an un-structured, more intense progeny?

My own mind tells me no. What we have in most free verse poetry is not a lack of classic form, but a variety of new forms, as yet un-catalogued. Shakespeare didn’t follow the standard format of the sonnet, but created his own slight variance on that form. The result was not condemnation, but the birth of the Shakespearian sonnet. For a poem to work, it requires structure. That this structure is not a known, accepted structure matters much less than that the poem is true to whatever structure it follows. Years from now, there may be professors in universities teaching the “rules of 20th Century Free Verse” to future literati, all of whom will be wracking their brains for words to fit those structures and convey meaning. Perhaps not.

Classic poetry teaches patterns of creativity. The act of taking your thoughts, and your words, and swirling, shifting, and re-arranging them until they fit both form and concept is both cleansing, and inspiring. New words, new phrases, seem to leap from the connection of those that come before, and the sense of challenge is immense. Much as the cards of the Tarot were originally conceived as a tool for meditation and personal insight, later to develop into fortune telling and divination placebos for the masses, classic poetry may now have more meaning to the poet; but does that make it less valid? Is there room for such poetry in this day and age? By all means.

There is really no clear delineation between the old, and the new, the classic and the romantic, except that subjective analysis applied by those who critique, but do not write. A poem may rhyme, or not, may flow like the back-beat of an old blues tune, or bark like a pen of hunting dogs catching a scent, but either way, it is an experience.

In writing - prose, poetry, or non-fiction, there are patterns. Some are more easily spotted and captured than others. Few can give the true satisfaction of a sonnet that works. These are rare. My hat is off, in the modern genre poetry world, to Mr. Keith Allen Daniels, who I believe is hard to rival in the art of the sonnet in the confines of genre work, though he has sadly passed on. I think, too often, that we write poetry for genre publications without the deep thought we might give other poetry. Too many poems I read in horror related publications are repeats of grave imagery, or pleadings for the poor, guilty souls of vampires.

Darkness encompasses half of existence, and in that darkness there are patterns. Whether you choose the Classic, or the Romantic style of expressing these patterns, learn to observe them. Expand your concept of what is dark poetry and erase some of those lines drawn between genre and mainstream. There is horror in the mainstream…count on it. And I would further suggest that poetry is a good exercise for anyone who writes. The patterns and images of strong poetry are succinct, vivid, and powerful. These patterns can be manipulated, as in the classic forms, to fit the formats of the short story, or novel, and the economy of words and deeper thought given to each “beat” of those words, when read or spoken, can change the face of a paragraph, or a page, of fiction dramatically.

Whether you choose structure as the base, or the inspiration of a moment – or manage a melding of both schools, the one rule that remains is that the poem be true. You will know when you have hit the right pattern, and if the poem feels forced, or discordant, it probably is. The poet is the harshest critic of his own work, as is true with any great art form. The form will be there when you carve away the words that don’t matter. When you see it, pluck it out, whether it rhymes like Dr. Seuss or flows like Robert Frost on acid. When you have it, you will know.

Don’t let it slip away.

The images slip
Sliding away so quickly
Then die, pen skewered

DNW