[New-Poetry] Organic?

[Joseph Duemer]

*Makes for more arguments. Like when my brother and I used to play baseball
with no fielders. We'd have to argue over whether the shortstop would have
gotten that one, or whether it would have gone through for a hit.

*In which the discussion would have been the main point, rather than the
game.

But the term organic goes back to the German & British Romantics, who used
it to set their work apart from the "artifice" of 18th century verse. An
attempt to ground poetic practice in an emerging understanding of the
natural world. Organic = natural. In 20th century poetry, A.R. Ammons' poem
"Corson's Inlet" pretty much puts the case for organic form. (By the way,
Paul Lake has written an essay (which I think fails to make its case), "The
Shape of Poetry," that uses Ammons' poem as a kind of whipping boy. (See: *The
Measured Word: On Poetry & Science*, which contains a number of remarkably
unsuccessful arguments -- American poets seem drawn to a kind of
faint-hearted scientism these days.)

jd


-- 
Joseph Duemer
Professor of Humanities
Clarkson University
Weblog: sharpsand.net
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