[New-Poetry] Marching orders for the Sonnet

[TheOldMole]

When Denise Levertov visited the Iowa Workshop during my long-ago days 
there, I remember that she really bristled when Paul Engle asked her if 
she would ever write a sonnet. I remember being surprised by the 
vehemence of her response. I guess in those days free verse was closely 
guarded turf.

jforjames at aol.com wrote:
> http://www.cortlandreview.com/features/06/december/barnstone_e.html
>  
>  Manifesto On The Contemporary Sonnet: A Personal Aesthetics 
> PRINCIPLE I: MAKE THE SONNET NEW
>  
> To quote Ezra Pound, the poet must "Make it new." William Carlos 
> Williams took Pound's dictum to mean that poets must be relentless 
> avant-gardists, the shock troops of the new. Thus, for Williams, "all 
> sonnets say the same thing of no importance. What does it matter what 
> the line 'says'? There is no poetry of distinction without formal 
> invention, for it is in the intimate form that works of art achieve 
> their exact meaning. . . ." Williams was so focused on inventing new 
> (i.e., free verse) forms that a fixed form such as the sonnet was to 
> him mere repetition, the stamping out of the same product again and 
> again by a factory press. The form for Williams is the content.
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-- 
Tad Richards
http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
http://opusforty.blogspot.com/