Wise advice for the twenty-first century poet.
Autumn, 1972
Interviewer:
You have always been a formalist. Today's poets seem to prefer free verse. Do you think that's an aversion to discipline?
Auden:
Unfortunately that's too often the case. But I can't understand -- strictly from a hedonistic point of view -- how one can enjoy writing with no form at all. If one plays a game, one needs rules, otherwise there is no fun. The wildest poem has to have a firm basis in common sense, and this, I think, is the advantage of formal verse. Aside from the obvious corrective advantages, formal verse frees one from the fetters of one's ego. Here I like to quote Valéry, who said a person is a poet if his imagination is stimulated by the difficulties inherent in his art and not if his imagination is dulled by them. I think very few people can manage free verse -- you need an infallible ear, like D. H. Lawrence, to determine where the lines should end.
5.02.2008
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1 comment:
I agree with Auden about formal verse being more challenging which thus squeezes more out of the poet to produce a work of worth. But I also think that the free verse is an escape for the writer. He says that few master the free verse, but how can you critique something so personal? What decides that a free verse poem is correct or not? If the structure is gone, is it the tone or the overall completeness of the poem?
I hold anyone who can produce a structured verse highly because it reflects the required discipline. I would like to get back into that form of poetry. It does help improve your writing in general by being selective.
But I will never reform to solely formal verse. I feel more of the poet's character in free verse, how ever sloppy it may seem.
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