[New-Poetry] terror dactyls

[Halvard Johnson]

Since all poems have some sort of form, my guess is that the number of
forms that die every day are up in the gazillions.

I also guess that that first poem to be a sonnet was greeted by cries of
"THAT's not a sonnet!"

Hal, who also thinks that poets are free to make up their own rules,  
which
others may voluntarily take unto themselves and even pass on to (but not
lay upon) others, and gives thanks to Whomever that we no longer believe
that a good harvest depends on getting the meter right

"Artists are the engineers of the soul."
                   --Iosif Dzhugashvili

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 12:13 PM, JforJames at aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 4/6/2008 11:49:46 AM Eastern Daylight Time, halvard at earthlink.net 
>  writes:
> 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.
> Perhaps in part true, Hal. But I speculate the first poem that was  
> to be a sonnet had at least the bare
> bones behind of plan behind its making, self-imposed guidelines  
> established by its first maker. Likely it was an influential maker/ 
> artist who first laid out a few 'sonnets' and then others followed  
> suit, copying the form/template so to speak.
>
> We know from his own testimony that Billy Collins invented his  
> paradelle by laying down some arbitrary rules for its construction.  
> It wasn't arrived at over time by critical consensus. Though many  
> other forms
> were not initiated as a joke as the paradelle was, I'd bet the were  
> arrived at in similar fashion.
> Maybe the historical record is in tatters and largely oral, but  
> certainly 'the sonnet's history' has been studied in depth. Is there  
> a 'first sonnet' and who were its first immitators? Where are the  
> irregulars of this list's formalist brain trust? Answers please.
>
> What are the forms that have died out? The extinct species.Surely a  
> few didn't make it over the long haul?
>
> Finnegan
>
>
>
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