Form and Poetry

Poetry is a form of verbal and written expression that strains against the confines of its cage. The cage is the container from which poetry takes its shape. The cage is form. Without form, there can be no poetry. The cage liberates the captive; form gives poetry the liberation of existence.

Form, as supple as skin, swells and shrinks, twists and bends in response to urgency and passivity, urge and passion. Poetry and its lover, form, writhe in warm rhythm in the bloodstream and seek to awaken in the mind the delight of the lover revealed to the loved, the delight of the loved in the lover revealed, and the mysterious delight of lovers together in these revelations. The moment of revelation is the moment we, within the cages of our bodies, each connect with the other. Lovers reveal and conceal, illuminate and mystify. Form and poetry come to an understanding that can be adequately felt but only inadequately expressed by words, unless those words can inspire the listener to mirror the feeling in their own mysterious emotions.

Poetry can break out of its cage, and so become other than poetry. The cage is not strong. Seeking to transcend form, poets lose their identity. Poetry is a visceral thing. Poetry needs the moist earth, the dust, a big smile, hatred, passion, fear, all of the emotions, and a desire to touch the audience with more than words. Severed from its organic roots to drift formless among the myriad human concepts and syntactic constructs, poetry can no longer be. Rearrange it into a paragraph and it will be a paragraph. A poem exists because of the way form lays the words upon the page or hangs them in the air. Form juxtaposes thoughts to make new concepts. If a poet is an artist, the palette is comprised of words, but form is the hand that places words like flecks of color upon the canvas of the audience's emotions.

Form can destroy a poem. The poet lunges for the needed rhyme, inserts an unfortunately awkward word, and poem and poet are dead. The poem is repugnant verse, the poet a greeting card writer. Bury the poem in a greeting card; bury the poet in the Hallmark aisle. Or, struggling within the confines of form's cage, the poet counts syllables like molecules, as if one missing molecule would destabilize the poetic compound. The would-be poet is almost correct: a missing syllable can destroy a poem, but only if the synergy of the lovers - form and poetry - depends upon the absolute fidelity of rhythm and meter. Poetry is: form and the thoughts behind words caught in the act of lovemaking. If the poet uses too little care to synchronize, both poetry and form will be left unsatisfied.

The relationship of poetry and form is as passionate and dangerous as that of all lovers. Form can focus poetic energy and facilitate connection between audience and poem. The flexibility of form allows a powerful synergy to develop, as the force of the poet's passion molds the form, and passion is molded by the limits of the form. However, form must be prevented from strangling poetry in the passion of its embrace. The poet must discern the difference between synergy and premature climax, embrace and strangulation. Form must be controlled so that poetry can exist.

As in love and life, experience tempered with consideration is the best teacher. When the synergy of poem and form works, the poem is magic and alive. When it is forced, a feeling of disappointment compromises the pleasure of the poem. When synergy is absent, the poem lays flat and lifeless, a needy vacuum that leaves us wanting. Poem and form must be sensitive to each other. That is the magic that poets create.