on form
(an interlude)
I love thinking about how, when it comes down to it, good poems just really don’t have much say in the final form in which they take. Think back to Dickinson, or to Hopkins, or to Celan, all of whom are known for their voices—the idiosyncrasies of their poems unique to them & to them alone.
Levertov wrote about “organic form”1 which is worth a read but, really—with the exception of using prescribed forms intentionally, or as exercises—it comes down to the fact that we (I, you) write the way we do because we have to, not because we choose to. The forms our poems ultimately take are a result of our vision, individualism, & these are little within our control.
Some quotations in this vein:
A sense of inevitability of a style—the sense that the artist had no alternatives, so wholly centered is he in his style.
-Susan Sontag, 1964
The greatest art seems secreted, not constructed.
-Susan Sontag, 1964
And it is th[is] defense of art which gives birth to the odd vision by which something we have learned to call “form” is separated off from something we have learned to call “content,” and to the well-intentioned move which makes content essential and form accessory.
-Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation”
Everyone is quick to avow that style and content are indissoluble, that the strongly individual style of each important writer is an organic aspect of his work and never something merely “decorative.”
-Susan Sontag, “On Style”
Those who define or evaluate a poem in terms of its content or subject matter are making a serious category mistake. Poems are utterances, but they are first and foremost aesthetic artifacts, events and occasions in language.
-Reginald Shepherd
I’ll have your weekly round-up out later today—
Form has to be organic to the material.
-Susan Sontag, 1965