Front cover image for An exaltation of forms : contemporary poets celebrate the diversity of their art

An exaltation of forms : contemporary poets celebrate the diversity of their art

Annie Finch, Kathrine Varnes (Editor)
The editors ask fifty contemporary poets to take a single poetic meter, stanza, or form, then describe it and show examples of how it has helped artistically shape poetry
Print Book, English, 2002
University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2002
poetry
442 pages : music ; 25 cm
9780472097258, 9780472067251, 0472097253, 0472067257
49279902
I. Meters. Accentual Verse / Dana Gioia. Syllabics: Sweeter Melodies / Margaret Holley. Counted Verse: Upper Limit Music / Paul Hoover. Iambic Meter / John Ridland. Blank Verse / Anthony Hecht. Anapestics / Charles O. Hartman. Running with Abandon: Some Notes on Trochaic Meter / Carl Phillips. Dactylic Meter: A Mary-Sounding Sea / Annie Finch. Free Verse / Michelle Boisseau. All Composed in a Meter of Catullus: Hendecasyllabics / Rachel Hadas. Pronouncing "Carpenter": Quantitative Meter in English / Rosanna Warren. Off the Main Road: Some Maverick Meters / John Frederick Nims
II. Stanzas. "The Bravest Sort of Verses": The Heroic Couplet / Timothy Steele. The Self-Engendering Muse: Terza Rima / Felix Stefanile. The Quatrain / John Hollander. Sapphics / Grace Schulman. Ottava Rima / Jacqueline Osherow. Spenser's Eponymous / R.S. Gwynn. The Decima: A Poetic Journey from Spain to New Mexico / Pat Mora
III. Received Forms. The Folk Ballad / W.D. Snodgrass. The Ballade: Exquisite Intricacy / Judith Barrington. The Blues / Raymond R. Patterson. Taking Shape: The Art of Carmina Figurata / Jan D. Hodge. Gists, Piths, and Poison-Pills: The Art of the Epigram / X.J. Kennedy. Ghazal: To Be Teased into DisUnity / Agha Shahid Ali. Haiku / Jean Hyung Yul Chu. Hip-Hop Rhyme Formations: Open Your Ears / Tracie Morris. Japanese-Style Linked Poems / William J. Higginson and Penny Harter. Form Lite: Limericks and Clerihews / Gail White. A Wand Made of Words: The Litany Poem / Nancy Willard. Musical Form and Formalist Poetry / Rob Hardin. The Pantoum's Postcolonial Pedigree / Vince Gotera. Strange Tales and Bitter Emergencies: A Few Notes on the Prose Poem / Michel Delville and Maxine Chernoff. The Metrics of Rap / DJ Renegade. Rondeaux and Roundels / Thomas M. Disch. Sestina: The End Game / Lewis Turco. The Sonnet / Marilyn Hacker. Triolet: Trippingly on the Tongue / Kathleene West. Gymnastics: The Villanelle / Maxine Kumin
IV. Principles for Formal Experimentation. Organic Form / Hilda Morley. Fractal Amplifications / Alice Fulton. Performance Poetry / Bob Holman. Beyond Found Poetry / Keith Tuma. The List Poem / David Lehman. Procedural Poetry: The Intentions of Nonintention / Jena Osman. Nude Formalism: A Sampler / Charles Bernstein. Oulipian Poetry / Aldon Lynn Nielsen. Two American Verse Forms: The Cinquain and the Quatern / Allison Joseph. The Low Coup as a Contemporary Afro-American Verse Form / Amiri Baraka. The Paradelle / Billy Collins. Predetermined Avant-Garde Forms / Mark Wallace
Chiefly in English; includes some poems in various languages