Natural language or don't bother

[Luckieman]

Right now....well it's not quite the opposite but it's not quite the same either. I *like* affectation in poetry. I like meter and rhyme and when a poet tries their best to fit the meter and rhyme. I like it when they do so cleverly, sans repetition, using unusual words and syntax that's on the edge of antiquated but not quite---I'm liking Spenser. I loved Dante (which I finished in the Italian, so he was metered and rhyming for me). And I love rap, if the idiom is a little more contemporary than the two artists previously mentioned.

I also like it when a poet writes in meter or with rhyme but happens to make it sound so natural. I like to read mercedes and Leanne, who are my favourite examples of that sort of poetry in this site, and of course I love Yeats and Shakespeare. And then another of my favourites, Louise Gluck, stopped writing in meter and with rhyme fairly early in her career, and I absolutely adore what she'd put out since. I just....like poetry when it's good. I have little patience for it when it's bad. And artifice is neither good nor bad. It works for some situations---say, for highly formal epics like Spenser---and it doesn't work for others. It all depends on the discernment of the writer.

If you find yourself reading poetry and you start rejecting everything with rhyme or in meter because you have little patience for it, then that's a you problem. You're cutting yourself off from how people have tended to construct poetry since the dawn of, well, poetry, and how people still *naturally* construct poetry, especially where poetry remains truly in touch with the people: imo, folk and pop music. When you seek to write something original, you'll inevitably write poor imitations of your ancients. If you seek to reference, you'll have so small a store to refer to that your pieces will seem rather repetitive. Don't
just read a lot, read well, deep, and broad.

Thanks RiverNotch. I only just found this, having joined today. I agree completely with what you say here with just one exception. I can't accept that the techniques and forms you (and I) approve of are affectation. To me, affectation consists of intentionally using technique one doesn't really understand to create tropes and tricks to deck out something that intrinsically wouldn't pass muster otherwise, and I see plenty of that throughout the entire recorded history of poetry - including the most modern. But that doesn't invalidate the techniques used, it just means they're used inappropriately in those contexts.

It strikes me that the word affectation is primarily used as a pejorative (more politic I think than 'insult' but it serves the same purpose). I'm reminded of the Futurist Manifesto, which declared that the only legitimate art was their own violence-driven surrealist version and that all museums and galleries should be destroyed - possibly (subconsciously) so that their art would stand supreme by there being nothing else to compare it with. I've also noted, having spent my life working among engineers and business folk who didn't know or care about art, that there's a tendency to despise and sneer at what isn't understood but as John Buchan pointed out, despising others serves primarily to elevate the self-importance of the one doing the despising. Surely there's room for all varieties and versions, as nobody ever died from a poem they didn't like.

Anyway I have a theory that for both the two layers to the presentation of a poem - the language and the form - there's an ideal choice that's most congruent with the message, so no one vocabulary or style will serve for every poem (unless the message is always the same). As long as the poem is intelligible to the reader, there's no such thing as 'archaic', 'obsolete' or 'old fashioned', and there are plenty of 'modern' tricks of presentation that make poems darned hard to read. I make daily use of my 1930s 13 volume Oxford English Dictionary because it opens doors to subtle meanings I might otherwise never have known about. That doesn't mean I'm stuck in the 1930s, it means I'm constantly improving my understanding of language - the primary tool of our art.

I'm perfectly happy for some folk to hate my poetry, as long as they're courteous in rejecting it. As the old Russian aphorism goes: Each to their own taste said the old worman, kissing the cow. I'm also always open to suggestions about improving it as long as they don't extend to entirely throwing it away and starting again from scratch just because the commentator doesn't like the poem. So many thanks for your declaration above - its a rallying banner for liberality and perfection of our art.