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Unread 04-21-2021, 07:51 AM
Yves S L Yves S L is offline
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I went into a lot of details about how I was interpreting the word "exercise" in my reply to Aaron, and going on much further without his input would just detract the focus in this thread from his interview.

Going back to the interview, I am again thinking about the overarching goal/problem of Aaron's project: formal poetry is not a museum piece but a mode that can express the full range and depth of 21st-century life.

Now the gigantic elephant in the room is that free verse is the standard for many (most?) poets who never so much mastered the most basic elements of prosody as taught in formal verse, but as I understand the history of verse in English, it was folk already skilled in formal verse who were looking for new modes of expression to match their rapidly changing social environment. Yes, there are a wide variety of modes possible in formal verse, but the formal constraints are themselves a limitation on how something can be said, and it is fun for me to contemplate this tension.

Last edited by Yves S L; 04-21-2021 at 08:02 AM.
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