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From: reid@uwvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.poems
Subject: Form in Poetry
Message-ID: <945@uwvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 23-Jun-83 03:43:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: uwvax.945
Posted: Thu Jun 23 03:43:38 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Jun-83 22:47:30 EDT
Lines: 25


Nothing personal, but most of the poetry I have seen here more closely
resembles "stream-of-consciousness" writing.  It is not poetry, in my opinion,
and not very interesting, for another opinion.

Open your favorite volume of poetry (usually about 1-1/2" thick) and *try* to
find a poem in there with no rhyme scheme, no stanza structure, or no apparent
cohesion of some sort.  I'll bet you can't find two poems.  There is a *good*
reason for that.  Anything else is only very warily considered poetry.  A poem
is a dance or words, in a sense, and a pleasant feeling can be found in just
reading it aloud, because of the cohesion and alliteration and meter and rhyme
and so forth.  That is why it is poetry in the first place, and I am willing
to argue about that.

In any case, again at the risk of offending everybody in this newsgroup, I
would rather not read people's diary entries, but some real live poetry.  I
have submitted maybe two poems of my own writing here, because they take time
to write, and are difficult to write.  That is why there are so few poets--it
is not easy to write poetry.  And if you can't write poetry yourself, then
dig out your "Golden Age of Poetry" volume, and type in your favorite Long-
fellow poem, then sit down with it and look *very* carefully at all the
structure that is there that you took for granted all these years....

Glenn Reid
..seismo!uwvax!reid