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Discussion
Guide
In the words of its editors,
Mark Strand and Eavan Boland, The Making of a Poem
"looks squarely at some of the headaches and mysteries
of poetic form." Here, two of our foremost poets provide
a lucid, straightforward primer for those who have
always felt that an understanding of form—sonnet,
ballad, villanelle, sestina, and more—would enhance
their appreciation of poetry. By example and explanation,
the anthology traces "the exuberant history of forms,"
a history that unites poets as manifold as John Keats
and Joy Harjo (the Ode) or Geoffrey Chaucer and Jean
Toomer (the Stanza). Each chapter is devoted to one
form, offering explanation, close reading, and a rich
selection of exemplars that amply demonstrate the
power and possibility of the form.
In the end, Boland and Strand write, "we hope that
the reader will agree that these forms are—as
we believe—not locks, but keys." In linking the
expressive potential of a poem to its architecture
of syllable and rhyme, this collection is as instructive
for the novice as it is inspiring for the practiced
poet.
Discussion
Questions
1. Try reading a poem from each section out loud.
Which forms are closer to the cadences of contemporary
speech? How are these forms used by contemporary poets?
2. On the other hand, certain forms are governed by
a sense of how they look on the page. How do you reconcile
this with the fundamentally oral (and therefore aural)
roots of poetry?
3. Both the villanelle and the sestina have clearly
defined rules. They were devised hundreds of years
ago in France and Italy. Their repetitions and patterns
are demanding and, at first sight, restrictive. Yet
these forms have been enormously popular with contemporary
poets. From Dylan Thomas to Elizabeth Bishop they
have found new life in modern times. Obviously, they
speak to a contemporary situation of thought and feeling.
Can you define what it might be about these repetitive
and closely structured forms that has made them seem
such an appropriate vehicle for today's poets?
4. Why do poetic forms change over time? The sonnet,
for instance, began in a time of courtly power and
flattery of the powerful. Now it is more often the
form for a compressed narrative or a throwaway address.
What is responsible for the change?
5. Forms function as a sort of punctuation, determining
the pace and rhythm of how we read. How do poets use
more traditional forms of punctuation?
6. One interesting approach to poetic form might be
to look at the way form is changed by society because
society has already changed the identity of the poet.
The clearest example is the balladeer. In earlier
societies the balladeer was almost a journalist: a
source for melodrama and information, a purveyor of
drama and sometimes lurid detail. But media has replaced
many of the functions of the balladeer. The contemporary
ballad is much more private and sorrowful, less taken
up with public address than private feeling. Are there
other examples of this?
7. The pantoum began in Malaysia. It became popular
in Britain and France in the nineteenth century. Then
its slow rhythms and offbeat repetitions began to
appeal to poets in the twentieth century. Does this
kind of journey seem strange or familiar? Is it possible
that a form is adopted by contemporary poets because
it offers a way of expressing a new perception of
time?
8. The poet's voice is a key element of form. Some
forms change it so much that they almost seem to be
voice filters. The villanelle, for example, resists
narrative, but the ballad highlights it. The sestina
thrives on fragmented speech; blank verse resists
it. How do you see the poetic voice in relation to
form?
9. Mark Strand's introductory essay doesn't mention
any of the forms discussed in the anthology. However,
how does his discussion of Archibald MacLeish's "You,
Andrew Marvell," incorporate aspects of form as discussed
in the body of the book?
10. Find examples of what Eavan Boland describes in
her introduction as using the voice "against
the line, rather than with it." Is this practice merely
subversive or does it expand the possibilities of
form? If so, how?
11. What do the editors mean when they write in the
introduction that "form and formalism are associated,
but not interchangeable terms"?
12. Again and again the editors return to the power
dynamic implicit in many of the forms discussed. Find
evidence of this in the poems themselves. In what
ways do poets who speak for the formerly disenfranchised
challenge this power dynamic?
13. What exactly do the editors mean by "shaping forms"?
What is their relationship to metrical forms? Are
there certain metrical forms that seem better matched
to certain shaping forms?
14. At first glance, it would appear that many of
the selections in the "Open Form" section differ very
little from the forms described in the preceding sections.
Closer inspection, however, reveals changes in both
the letter and the spirit of the rules of form. How,
for example, does W. B. Yeats bend the stanza to his
needs?
More Books by the Authors
by Mark Strand
Sleeping with One Eye Open
Reasons for Moving
Darker: Poems
The Story of Our Lives
The Sargeantiville Notebook
Elegy for my Father
The Late Hour
The Continuous Life
Dark Harbor: A Poem
Blizzard of One
by Eavan Boland
Against Love Poetry
The Lost Land
In a Time of Violence
An Origin Like Water
Outside History
Object Lessons
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