Notes on Poetic Form (II) by David Lehman
II.
Subscribing to the traditional paradox that liberty most flourishes when most held in check, John Ashbery offers a shrewdly pragmatic explanation for his interest in the exotic pantoum. "I was attracted to the form," he writes, "because of its stricture, even greater than in other hobbling forms such as the sestina or canzone. These restraints seem to have a paradoxically liberating effect, for me at least." Ashbery concludes with sly deadpan" "The form has the additional advantage of providing you with twice as much poem for your effort, since every line has to be repeated twice."
To an important extent, such formal scheming cast the poet in the guise of problem-solver. In the course of working out the puzzle he has set for himself, a poem will get written -- not as an afterthought, but as an inevitable by-product of the process. By this logic, the tougher the formal problem, the better -- the more likely it is to act as a sort of broker between language, chance, and the poet's instincts. "And this may indeed be one way that 'form' helps the poet," Anthony Hecht observes. "So preoccupied is he bound to be with the fulfillment of technical requirements that in the beginning of his poem he cannot look very far ahead, and even a short glance forward will show him that he must improvise, reconsider and alter what had first seemed to him his intended direction, if he is to accommodate the demands of his form." This is desirable, notes Hecht, if the aim is -- as Robert Frost said it was -- an outcome that is both "unforeseen" and "predestined."
No doubt it's the prevalence of this aim that accounts for the sestina's unprecedented popularity among modern poets. The votaries in the sestina chapel may begin with Sir Philip Sidney ("Ye Goatherd Gods"), but there then follows a gap of three centuries before the procession is renewed by Rossetti and Pound, Auden and Elizabeth Bishop, and innumerable poets since. Allowing for maximum maneuverability within a tightly controlled space, the sestina has a special attraction for the poet in search of a formal device with which to scan his unconscious. Writing a sestina, Ashbery once remarked, is like riding downhill on a bicycle while the pedals push your feet. The analogy makes the whole procedure sound exhilirating, risky, and somewhat foolhardy, making it irresistible. Paradoxically, the very ubiquity of the sestina -- it's a favorite in creative writing workshops -- has recently begun to argue against it. The logic is Yogi Berra's: "Nobody eats at that restaurant anymore -- it's too crowded."
[from The Line Forms Here (Poets on Poetry series, University of Michigan Press, 1992); adapted from the afterword of Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms, ed. David Lehman (Macmillan, 1987)]
Subscribing to the traditional paradox that liberty most flourishes when most held in check, John Ashbery offers a shrewdly pragmatic explanation for his interest in the exotic pantoum. "I was attracted to the form," he writes, "because of its stricture, even greater than in other hobbling forms such as the sestina or canzone. These restraints seem to have a paradoxically liberating effect, for me at least." Ashbery concludes with sly deadpan" "The form has the additional advantage of providing you with twice as much poem for your effort, since every line has to be repeated twice."
To an important extent, such formal scheming cast the poet in the guise of problem-solver. In the course of working out the puzzle he has set for himself, a poem will get written -- not as an afterthought, but as an inevitable by-product of the process. By this logic, the tougher the formal problem, the better -- the more likely it is to act as a sort of broker between language, chance, and the poet's instincts. "And this may indeed be one way that 'form' helps the poet," Anthony Hecht observes. "So preoccupied is he bound to be with the fulfillment of technical requirements that in the beginning of his poem he cannot look very far ahead, and even a short glance forward will show him that he must improvise, reconsider and alter what had first seemed to him his intended direction, if he is to accommodate the demands of his form." This is desirable, notes Hecht, if the aim is -- as Robert Frost said it was -- an outcome that is both "unforeseen" and "predestined."
No doubt it's the prevalence of this aim that accounts for the sestina's unprecedented popularity among modern poets. The votaries in the sestina chapel may begin with Sir Philip Sidney ("Ye Goatherd Gods"), but there then follows a gap of three centuries before the procession is renewed by Rossetti and Pound, Auden and Elizabeth Bishop, and innumerable poets since. Allowing for maximum maneuverability within a tightly controlled space, the sestina has a special attraction for the poet in search of a formal device with which to scan his unconscious. Writing a sestina, Ashbery once remarked, is like riding downhill on a bicycle while the pedals push your feet. The analogy makes the whole procedure sound exhilirating, risky, and somewhat foolhardy, making it irresistible. Paradoxically, the very ubiquity of the sestina -- it's a favorite in creative writing workshops -- has recently begun to argue against it. The logic is Yogi Berra's: "Nobody eats at that restaurant anymore -- it's too crowded."
[from The Line Forms Here (Poets on Poetry series, University of Michigan Press, 1992); adapted from the afterword of Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms, ed. David Lehman (Macmillan, 1987)]
posted by Ismael Ricardo Archbold at 2/13/2006 06:19:00 PM
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