Great comparison Ramya! Your piece is so humorous and meaningful. I believe it is not just with sonnets, even in writing an essay, the concept of simplicity has lent itself to lack of craft form just like sweatpants.
I can understand the need for a break, although I very much look forward to your form filled artistic writings. It is purely a delight read your creations!
What a lovely analogy between corsets and poetry structure! I am, however, a fervent support of free verse in certain situations (I know, I know - hear me out!).
Literature and poetry appears to be a dying art these days. Today’s youth seem to no longer possess the attention or tolerance for delayed gratification that is needed to properly read, digest and synthesize meaning from a poem or story. In that aspect, free verse absolutely has a crucial role (and benefits!) as a gateway to foster a younger generations’ interest in poetry. It is also particularly useful in its adaptability to the mediums of our time (as much as I detest Rupi Kaur’s particular brand of instagram poetry, you can’t deny that it has found wide success and recognition - a Keats or Tennyson poem just doesn’t have the instant relatability that “online viral-ness” demands).
Perhaps the best compromise is to require structure and meaning in poetry but to leave the expression to the author. Poetry, at its core, is a reflection of the human experience. If the central message is conveyed, could we not excuse a little metrical liberalism? Besides, as Mary Oliver noted in her book, “A Poetry Handbook: “free verse is not, of course, free. It is free from formal metrical design, but it certainly isn’t free from some kind of design”. ;)
This is a really good point! Hopefully free verse, even of the flabby kind that particularly annoys me, can inspire in readers a love of poetry that leads them up the more arduous passes of Mt. Parnassus. I know when I was a teenager, there were so many poets on Tumblr I loved to read, and even though I can't read them now because my taste has outgrown them, they sparked my love of language and imagery.
“free verse is not, of course, free. It is free from formal metrical design, but it certainly isn’t free from some kind of design” — this is also a good point, a lot of the first free verse poets started out writing metrical poems. So their later poems had structure, too, but it was just a structure the poet had the freedom to come up with.
Great comparison Ramya! Your piece is so humorous and meaningful. I believe it is not just with sonnets, even in writing an essay, the concept of simplicity has lent itself to lack of craft form just like sweatpants.
I can understand the need for a break, although I very much look forward to your form filled artistic writings. It is purely a delight read your creations!
Thank you so much!! <3 I agree that form can also apply very much to writing essays!
What a lovely analogy between corsets and poetry structure! I am, however, a fervent support of free verse in certain situations (I know, I know - hear me out!).
Literature and poetry appears to be a dying art these days. Today’s youth seem to no longer possess the attention or tolerance for delayed gratification that is needed to properly read, digest and synthesize meaning from a poem or story. In that aspect, free verse absolutely has a crucial role (and benefits!) as a gateway to foster a younger generations’ interest in poetry. It is also particularly useful in its adaptability to the mediums of our time (as much as I detest Rupi Kaur’s particular brand of instagram poetry, you can’t deny that it has found wide success and recognition - a Keats or Tennyson poem just doesn’t have the instant relatability that “online viral-ness” demands).
Perhaps the best compromise is to require structure and meaning in poetry but to leave the expression to the author. Poetry, at its core, is a reflection of the human experience. If the central message is conveyed, could we not excuse a little metrical liberalism? Besides, as Mary Oliver noted in her book, “A Poetry Handbook: “free verse is not, of course, free. It is free from formal metrical design, but it certainly isn’t free from some kind of design”. ;)
P.S. Why do I feel like part of your decision to use this analogy was just an excuse for you to look at pretty corsets? xD
hmm.... really makes you think.....
This is a really good point! Hopefully free verse, even of the flabby kind that particularly annoys me, can inspire in readers a love of poetry that leads them up the more arduous passes of Mt. Parnassus. I know when I was a teenager, there were so many poets on Tumblr I loved to read, and even though I can't read them now because my taste has outgrown them, they sparked my love of language and imagery.
“free verse is not, of course, free. It is free from formal metrical design, but it certainly isn’t free from some kind of design” — this is also a good point, a lot of the first free verse poets started out writing metrical poems. So their later poems had structure, too, but it was just a structure the poet had the freedom to come up with.
It is a wonderful comparison of freeing women’s body and poems from their restraints
Thank you!!