I was reading at the library about New Formalism today. It's a contemporary movement in American poetry. They're in favor of Formal Verse Being Okay.
Why is it an American movement? Because Formal Verse always remained Okay in the UK. Probably it was Okay in the whole Commonwealth, for all I know. But in the US there was a stretch of time where it was Free Verse Or Nothing!
(Yes, there were some dinosaur-like exceptions, but they were frowned upon.)
So, why were the English different than us? I don't know.
For some reason they thought of Formal
as still being perfectly normal,
rather than treason to the cause
of flouting outmoded laws.
No comments:
Post a Comment