[New-Poetry] terror dactyls

[Halvard Johnson]

If one can't tell a "traditional" sonnet from a "non-traditional" one  
without
their being labeled as such, one should seek help.

Btw, I've done one with only one letter per line. If I not mistaken  
it's in
The Sonnet Project (linked below).

Also, btw, my guess is that the so-called rules came after the poems,  
not before.
But actually those "rules" are merely descriptive of how some poems/ 
sonnets/etc.
are written.

Rules are for civil order (along with baseball, etc.) not poetry (or  
art in general).

Hal

Today's Special

The Sonnet Project
http://www.xpressed.org/hsonnet.pdf

Halvard Johnson
================
halvard at earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html
http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
http://www.hamiltonstone.org
http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html


On Apr 6, 2008, at 11:32 AM, JforJames at aol.com wrote:

> A form as universally successful as the sonnet is bound to attract  
> artists who want to tinker
> with its formal constraints or those who just want play with the  
> form. A true formalist like Mona
> Van Duyn did a series of 'sonnets' with one word per line while  
> employing a rhyme scheme. Also,
> there's to consider the break from the Italian form toward the  
> English sonnet form. What did
> practitioners of the former at the time say/think about the  
> liberties taken by the latter?
>
> It seems easy enough these days to stick a modifier on the term if  
> one needs to make clear
> distinction: 'traditional sonnet' or 'formal sonnet' would do the  
> trick. Or one could put quotes around
> the non-traditonal sonnet, "In Ted Berrigan's 'sonnets' we see..."
>
> My philosophical side reminds me that poetic forms are not like  
> Plato's 'forms'. There isn't a universal
> sonnet form/ideal that manifests itself in the language object we  
> call a sonnet. All forms arose
> in some arbitrary fashion from a set of rules first laid down an  
> often unknown ur-maker. So in that sense
> all forms are arbitrary and capricious. A certain14 line metered and  
> rimed creation becomes habituated
> in the general practice of poets, while the twelve-liner or the  
> eighteen-liner never caught on. Many claims have been for special  
> qualities inherent in 14 lines (or the 8 + 6 mode), but most are  
> specious.
> Finnegan
>
> In a message dated 4/5/2008 5:52:47 PM Eastern Daylight Time, jjeffreymail at yahoo.com 
>  writes:
> You're right, of course, in yawning.  It is all about the poem's  
> worth.  I guess I'm just sick of all the stretching of terms to the  
> point where they're useless.  And it's not just sonnets, it's poetry  
> itself.  It's capital A Art itself.  I think instead I'll go read a  
> Shakespeare's villanelle, or maybe I'm in the mood for Basho's  
> heroic couplets.
>
> John
>
>
> David Graham <grahamd at ripon.edu> wrote:
> These discussions sometimes make me scratch my head, but more often  
> they just make my eyes glaze over.  I agree with John Jeffrey, as it  
> happens, but so what?  I'm very interested in whether or not a given  
> poem is a good one.  But whether it is or is not a sonnet?   
> Yawn . . . .
>
> I'm content when someone says that a sonnet must have 14 lines and a  
> rhyme scheme; and I'm equally happy when Gerald Stern insists that a  
> sonnet is simply a "little song" and need have no particular shape.   
> I probably wouldn't follow his example myself, but again:  who  
> cares?  And why?
>
>
>
>
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