[New-Poetry] Grammatical

[Chris Stroffolino]

I like your point, but one question that keeps coming back to me is  
the "irregular" punctuation of Shakespeare's sonnets and Dickinson's  
poems for instance (just to mention some famous canonical short  
poems, I could mention Blake's longer works as well). It's not that  
Shakesprare and Dickinson aren't highly structured and formalist in  
other ways, but that the question of "grammar" doesn't seem to be as  
central as "the line" etc...


On Sep 1, 2006, at 4:39 PM, steve moore wrote:

> It seems to me that after modernism and postmodernism (popomo?) the  
> problem with not adhering to basic grammatical rules is that when  
> you do deviate, it has no effect. Essentially, a poet who casts  
> standard grammatical structures aside is casting away a very  
> important tool, the ability to deviate when necessary. Loose  
> grammar was shocking in the same way free verse was shocking  
> (talking in loose generalities of course), now it's traditional.
>
> On Sep 1, 2006, at 3:18 PM, Chris Stroffolino wrote:
>
>> i think i would've agreed with this in 1986, and even up until  
>> around 1996--
>> but around that time the jorie graham aesthetic kinda merged with  
>> the "language poetry" aesthetic
>> (taking kind of the least interesting aspects of both of them,
>> which generally happens with corporate mergers too)--
>> and now one has the
>> simply dull fragment,
>> alongside (vying with) dull exposition...but that's just the  
>> fashion biz..
>> luckily, there's always some others....you just gotta poke around...
>>
>> On Sep 1, 2006, at 4:05 PM, Suzanne Burns wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 9/1/06, David Graham <grahamd at ripon.edu > wrote:
>>>
>>> too much contemporary verse is simply dull exposition, to his eyes
>>>
>>> For me this is the heart of the matter-- I absolutely felt that  
>>> way about that period of time when everyone seemed to be writing  
>>> the same kind of narrative expository poem (usually  
>>> autobiographical or pseudo-autobiographical) and it was good to  
>>> see a healthy rebellion against that.  For me, running in the  
>>> opposite direction helped my growth.  I don't think I am the only  
>>> person who has had that response.
>>>
>>> Suzanne Burns
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>>
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