Form & Discovery in Poetry
Alfred Nicol
Formal Verse. What an off-putting label! Do I have to wear a jacket and tie while I sit at my writing desk? Who can blame a beginning poet for wanting to stay clear of such a thing? Who wouldn't rather put on torn jeans and spend a little time outdoors with Walt Whitman?
Ah, but it's not like that at all!
Experience the freedom that comes from working in form. You end up playing a little game with language—and it is play, but like true child’s play, it’s very serious play; you lose yourself in it—and the poem says what it means to say while you’re occupied with kicking the words around. That way the meaning of the poem comes as a surprise even to the poet, and as Frost said, "No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader." Why write or read at all, if we already know how it turns out?
