@Shen Friebe @Marc A Brimble @Bendy Nguyen @Adam Gary intersted in your ideas. You don't need to use highbrow terms, but your poetic competence gives you insight.
Stephen Fry in an 'ode less travelled' p24 states 'the organising principle behind the verse is the metre not the sense'. I am by no means as learned as he and have no disagreement with this statement, but organising a verse is not primary to expressing a poetic idea. Before verse comes consideration of 'what am I trying to express'.
This i believe is where meaning reigns supreme. Form including: rhythm, rhyme scheme, stanza length, etc all need to add to meaning. But also the comprehension of the reader needs to be considered. Whilst a temporal change within a line or stanza i believe creates confusion and loss of meaning, a temporal (tense) change between stanzas is ok, as long as it adds sense to the message of the poem. Whether the poet was conscious ( ie intended) the change doesn't matter.
I have great admiration for Elizabeth barret browning as poet, but having read 'Essay on mind' rhyming couplets, even when broken into chapters, is not the form to communicate nature of intelligence. The form and content separated to the point when I struggled for the meaning. In fact I only finished it because I was in lock down. Whereas her husband, Robert Browning uses heroic verse as a tool of irony in 'the last duchess ' see Stephen Fry p 205 -6; the nobleman narrator's attitude is indicated by the form although the content of the poem is how his jealousy led to killing his wife.
I would love to hear your ideas even if you think this unimportant.
Hi @Shen Friebe I will return to work on Thursday and will be spending less time at the cove, I reply but I am still digesting (I am the anthesis of an instagrammer).Your comments brought out a meaning to my words, that are there but I wasn't fully conscious of them. My original intention of referencing Fry's book was to indicating my argument wasn't to contradict him, but to discuss meaning in an all encompassing manner. Your comments though of the two way flow between technique and 'what do I have to say' challenges my underlying way of thinking of poetry. I think your comments are true, I have been able to think of an instance a few years when I moved from form to story, albeit with dubious success, a stranger who listened thought it contrivance. I am still digesting the significance of your words and will continue to do so.
Malibu barbie; firstly, I thought the first predominately image, the second more concerned with technique ( the reference to B 52 song indicating this). But both convey meanings and like reconstructing a photograph for photoshop snippets, together provide a third. Did you read Bendy's comments on the difference between intention and a readers interpretation this is so true as well.
Do I have to join instagram to read the whole poem of Malibu Barbie? I speak as a failed 'barbie' but have never intended to disparage women who found fun in these images. The universe is directing me deal with these issues again.
Another issue my post was trying to raise was: types of form convey different aspects of a theme; rhyming couplets and other narrative forms are vechicles to depict event or event sequences or talking about emotions (This is not meant to imply that a poet can't take this narrative and create an emotional sub text they do, will and should, but the sub text is below the surface), structures that use prime numbers (2,3,5,7) as principles create vehicles that go inside the emotion or mental state (they are not narrative forms). But is this just my personal experience or have I said something shared by others, this i don't know. Interested in your thoughts on this.