[New-Poetry] Eratophobia: fear of poetry (& the end of Nat'lPoetry Slag ...

[Anny Ballardini]

could probably 
shed some light 
on the dark ages of  formalist poetry, 
when versifiers were 
hiding 
the catacombs 
and writing their poems 
on winding sheets 
of the dead. 

poe revisited
  From: JforJames at aol.com 
  Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2007 8:25 PM
  Nat'lPoetry Slag ...


  In a message dated 5/5/2007 12:58:54 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Opus40-01 at opus40.org writes:
    don't think, for Turco, that it's at all strange for a division, that 
    being an issue that's so important to him.



  Turco talked a bit about the 60s and 70s when he felt like an outsider (as a formalist) in the poetry community. He spoke about how he got into compiling The Book of Forms. He said there wasn't any comparable book available at the time. I'm not sure if he was exagerating on that point. Probably he meant his guidebook was to be morre comprehensive than anything else available at the time. Some of the formally inclined on the list could probably shed some light on the dark ages of  formalist poetry, when versifiers were hiding the catacombs and writing their poems on winding sheets of the dead. 

  Someone else might know whether Turco's books contain a mix of free and formal poetry? If they do, then it strikes me as very odd to separate out the two modes in one's corpus. I think if you're going to publish both kinds then you should see them as complementary in some way and not something to quarantined apart. I would think that it'd be desirable that one's readers could encounter a villanelle on page 98 and turn to an unmetered, sans rime narrative on p.  99, and so on through the collection.
  Finnegan 



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