Like pretty much else, I usually write structureless poetry. I never really thought about it. I'd read poetry that rhymed and poetry that didn't, and I was under the impression that the former was old-fashioned and simplistic, so I wrote the latter.
I suppose my idea that poetry ought to be free-form was related to my assumption that poetry couldn't be edited. Maybe it was that a poem should be spontaneous, unfiltered, unconstrained by conventions of punctuation, grammar, structure in general, just pure, unfiltered expression. But, like I said, I never thought about it.
Charlie said "Bah!"
Fortunately, he didn't have to say it to me. I attended a workshop he taught on structured poetry back in October, and someone else asserted that poetry should be pure expression. After saying "Bah!" he asserted that the closest thing humans have to pure expression is the cry of an infant, and if we "wanted to say anything more articulate than a fart of emotion, we've got to learn how to communicate."
And we had a long discussion about the difference between expression and communication, and later segued into the definition of poetry. In that workshop, we also briefly covered the history of poetry and the development of its different forms, and then explored several different historically popular structures. We read poems--mostly Charlie read them, very much performed them, his contention being that most people didn't understand poetry because they'd never heard it read well--and practiced writing them.
An idea emerged, for me, anyway, that far from being free of structure, poetry is actually more about structure than prose it--that the structurelessness of the poetry I was familiar with was actually a structure of its own, an active, communicative presence, not the freedom and absence I'd assumed.
Anyway, I got interested in the subject, and after the workshop was over I did some further readings on the subject, both reading about poetry and exploring the works of various poets, from Shakespeare to Edna St. Vincent Millay. I briefly flirted with the idea of making a major study of it, but after about a week and a half my motivation petered out and I moved on to other things.
Except after that, while continuing with my assignment to write and edit poems about my spot in the words, I started trying out structured poetry. I invented a couple of forms myself, playing around with rhyme and meter schemes and earning question marks all over my paper from Charlie, and I tried out half a dozen other forms, with varying degrees of success.
Eventually I found myself writing a lot of sonnets. I like them, they're short, but not too short, and they have a certain elegance.
About a month ago, I got the idea of making this poetry collection I'm supposed to be making a collection of sonnets. I'm interested in the idea that the same poem--the same creative impulse and idea, I mean--could be poured into different forms. I thought of writing the same poem over and over in multiple forms, but I haven't actually gotten myself organized enough to do that. What I have done, over the past few weeks, is to start re-writing some of my existing poems as sonnets.
I haven't told Charlie, yet. He's not really available at the moment, and I'm a little worried that I won't be able to stick with it, and I don't want to disappoint him if I don't. I'm also a little afraid that he'll laugh at me, but if he laughs, he laughs, I can deal with it.
Anyway, I kind of like the challenge.
Meanwhile, I've been interviewing novices who are ready to graduate--as part of my plan to learn more about the school so I can earn my ring--and preparing for the school year. I intend to get serious about demonstrating my ability to add something to the academic mix, here, by teaching workshops that have a clear relationship to both student interest and the required subjects. To that end, I've been working with Sharon to develop class plans and to get on the schedule prominently.
Today she made an interesting suggestion; why don't I teach a couple of talks and seminars on writing, to put myself in a position to offer tutoring and editing to students later in the year?
Alright, why don't I?
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