"All I know...is if you don’t figure out something then you’ll just stay ordinary, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a work of art or a taco or a pair of socks! Just create something new and there it is! And it's you, out in the world, outside of you and you can look at it or hear it or read it or feel it and you know a little more about...you. A little bit more than anyone else does. Does that make any sense at all?"

Saturday, February 27, 2010

18. Forms, Forms and More Forms

I'm interested to know how everyone is feeling about the forms we've been using lately.

We've covered different types of stanzas, sonnets, syllabics, sestinas, pantoums, ghazals, anaphora (technique, but whatever). I'm guessing I'm not the only one that is writing in forms you never thought you would...and sometimes actually half-not-hating the result!

Do you find that forms help or impede your writing abilities? Do they "expand your horizons"...or do they feel constricting?

I think I can understand both sides. On the one hand, sometimes there is a poem I really want to write, but I know it won't work in the form I've been assigned. In this case, my thought process is "Well, I need to finish this one for school, so that one can wait" and it gets pushed aside, the idea scribbled into a notebook, and hopefully will be pulled back out one day, but there's not guarantee.

On the other hand, however, I can see why it's beneficial. Aren't we creating images we never thought we would--particularly with recent lessons? I felt that way with the syllabic; I ended up writing lines I didn't anticipate producing because they had to be short and to the point.

Opinions?

1 comment:

  1. I feel like doing these forms has really helped me as a writer. I never had any type of organization to my writing before this class, and I didn't force myself to go "outside of the box" to explore new ways to get images for my poetry, or to really focus on my words, because my words were limited. Sometimes they can be restricting, but for the most part, I have learned a great deal from them. I certainly agree about the images part, I have written some things that I thought would never come out of me.

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