I'm going to be away from any computer for a few days. I should be back posting by Thursday. So please don't stray far my good readers! I shall return!
In the meantime, consider a few questions regarding poetics: could one do an analysis to determine which forms (including free verse) are most creative? What would you use? I would think we would give points for use of images, use of metaphors (and similes), but count of for uncreative uses of cliches, platitudes, etc., and also count off points for abstractions unconnected to images and metaphors. What other criteria would be use to determine creativity in a poem?
2 comments:
Would it be possible to analyze the relationship between form and themes or topics? Or does this only make sense at the level of the individual poem?
What about the establishment and subsequent violation of pattern and expectation? It's (relatively) easy to talk about it in metered verse. In free verse, I guess it would be the creative reintroduction of meter. I'm not sure how you would quantitatively compare the two, though.
I would think that it would be possible to analyze the relationship among form, theme, and topics. Sonnets tend to be a dialectical investigation of love. Now, does this fact stem from the fact that the inventor of the sonnet form, Petrarch, used it this way, and subsequent poets followed suit, or is there something inherent in the form? Hard to say. It would be an interesting thing to investigate, though.
As for the establishment and subsequent violation of pattern and expectation -- which creates meaning and helps us to remember the poem (something I discuss at length in my dissertation, over at Evolutionary Aesthetics). One can do it with free verse, but it becomes more difficult and relies more on unexpected words following each other, especially on the following line. Thus, in free verse, the word chosen at the end of the line becomes even more important than it does in metered verse.
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