The Importance of Form to Taking Your Poetry to The Next Level Part 1

When a lot has been on my mind when I first start writing, the poem is likely to emerge as more of a brainstorm filled with what was floating in my surface conscious.

That wouldn’t be poetry so much as a clearing of the mind. A poem that is more likely to be published is one written like a story: it needs a theme, a title, a first, third or omniscient narrative, good rhythm never hurts the pacing and can be rightly jarring when discussing the mysteries and horrors of life and death.

Sometimes when one reads a poem, there are ideas that seem obvious metaphors to only the writer along with pop-culture references and the writer must be reminded that the reader does not have ESP, or the same world view, despite watching the same TV shows. Often, when the mind races competing ideas against each other, I find the symmetry and order of form, whether it be a sonnet or a haiku to be just what I need for my imagery and passions to take coherent shape by following certain syllable and rhyming rules. Uninformed poets might think such forms are stuffy and inhibitive to one’s creative powers, triggering memories of brilliance and spirit in school or in some other institution setting where one was ridiculed for their enterprising spirit.

Rather, think of the different forms of poetry as exercises and discipline that can only help your art. Tools to make you eloquent and yes, your brilliance and elucidating passionate epiphanies understood. Many teachers of poetry, including published mentors, will often use music as the simile and metaphor to explain how important learning formal discipline is to your writing. It’s all in the intrepretation of course. The definition of poet, the definition of poetry. As the recent slogan for the Pittsburgh Slamtorum put it, “It’s Your Word Against His.” As religions and especially the mainstream one in America knows “The Word” is God. So when you argue my word against your word, it’s my God against your God. My ideas, my passions, my experience against yours, and charisma and tradition often trump logic and reason for the good of those whose world you can wreck with your words. Definitions are so important.

Poets are no less up in arms about their interpretations and definitions of poetry, poets and poems than are any who read or speak the spoken word because it’s all what we see, read here, think and feel when we communicate the ways in which humans do. Hey, if all the religions and even those claiming to be of the same religion are tearing each others guts out don’t expect it to be much different here. There are the laymen, so to speak, the blue-collars and the criminals, and those who went to school far from the nitty gritty and so have no street cred and each discredits the other.

I would now like to add the metaphor of the fighter, the warrior. There is the disciplined martial artist and the trained soldier who have been trained formally but not seen combat. Then there are experienced fighter who is schooled in combat formally via martial arts, or in a national military or domestic security whether it be the government paid police force or the private mercenary sector: spies, bounty hunters, security guards.

There are the working class heroes who are warriors by virtue of the neighborhood the grew up in.

Then there are the various warriors on the street level who have plenty of experience as goons, thugs, murderers, assassins, all valuable tools in turfs wars, but not all have formal training. They are romanticized as rogues, robin hoods, modern day feudal lords just trying to eke out a living in the “The Man’s” cruel world.

Then there are of course, the posers who adopt the look and language of the gangster, hoodlum or pirate, but would never want to be part of the action. They are happily content to play Grand Theft Auto, perhaps have a few acquaintances who look scary, but eventually do something “respectable” and settle down. And real street warriors with experiences are genuinely annoyed by posers. The Poser street warrior/criminal warrior knows this and pay the actual warriors respect when in their presence by dropping their eyes if not their bladders to the ground.

vis a vis

There are plenty of literati poets who think slam poets should be a smudge of DNA on a graffitti stained wall on a New York subway.

Vis a vis the nitty gritty slam poet verses the literati.

There are plenty of the poser literati poets who can write perfect technical form but the inspirational height and depth eludes them and they chase it the way men centuries ago chased the green fairy and the secret to turning lead into gold.

Likewise, the universities and educational institutions who train many students in their arts educating the poor and rich just as the martial arts and military schools do, train many artists and soldiers but most of them continue the arts as a hobby or their soldiering from the desk. (In the latter case, there is an exception in times of war.) But very few traditionally become the epitome of everything it means to be a poet, or a warrior. Few reach those Zen moments or frenzied levels of vitriolic violence. Because so few can balance the passion, the inspiration, with the discipline and form. Because we as a human whole need to link or right and left brains better. And that is what, fitting poetry into forms does. I will illustrate this in the blogs to follow.