I resent that you call Laura Riding, Graves' consort! She was much more, on the isle of Majorca and elsewhere; she was instrumental in bringing him to modernism, and, for my little money, the better and far more original poet.
That having been said (ahem :=) ) I'm not sure I would make the same equation between end rhymes and symmetrical forms = rigidity and "free" verse = fluidity. Much of what passes for free verse today is quite stilted and rigid and unadventurous (while believing itself to be free) and much of the best of symmetrical form, going right back to Wyatt and swimming back up through Shakespeare and Milton and Blake is very fluid. It breaks "the rules" all the time-- adding a syllable, juggling the metre-- but at interesting places and for good reason. The joy of reading it is listening to how it plays into and out of the rules. The interesting part of symmetrical poetry is the controlled variation away from the rules and not any robotic adherence to them. And the rules are not iambic pentameter, for there is a very wide range of other forms and metres to tap. Let's move away from this idea that all "traditional" English poetry is written in this mysterious thing called iambic pentameter. This principle has been best summed up by the brilliant, and textured rapper Mos Def: "Black, you know the motto-- stay fluid even in staccato!" And I think it is unfair to speak of end-rhymes as "unfashionable". When did they go out of fashion? Right after Eliot you had Auden, a super-modern poet and incorrigible end-rhymer. You had Lorca and his rhyming gypsy songs. Then you had Larkin; then you had the likes of Lowell, Marianne Moore, Adrienne Rich, Heaney, Walcott, Carol Ann Duffy, Rita Dove who all were and are guilty, guilty, guilty of deliberate, premeditated end-rhyming several times in their lives. You had, Nissim, Keki, Adil, Shahid, and many other Indians who were guilty of the same. Now you have Muldoon, who pushes his end-rhymes a bit far, but is still guilty. You have rap, which is bringing it all back, which is not going away, and which all the major poets like Heaney and Walcott have said in public is sometimes full of far more verbal energy than a lot of what appears in the literary journals. You have secondary orality, which takes the relationship between performance and the page back to Shakespeare. Neither end-rhymes not any of the deep sonic resonances that poetry has relied on for centuries have, or are going away. You can call it superficial ornamentation, Ankur, and it is that, but it is also in some ways (as the poet Veronica Forrest-Thompson wrote before she died) something even more fundamental to poetry than meaning , it is the childlike heart of poetry before the fake profundity that many poets profess. It is both the heart and the surface of poetry, and the meaning lies in between: this is the contradiction. But what I think Rajan is saying (and he may please correct me if I am wrong) is not that free verse is bad or evil but that even if poets write only in free verse, or only in prose lines (like one of my favourites St. John Perse) for public forums ,there is evidence of them having trained, experimented with and cut their teeth on symmetrical forms. If one hasn't practised end-rhymes, for instance, then I suspect that one will find it a lot harder to hear rhymes when they appear in other, more unexpected places. I find many people who have written only in free verse actually don't hear a rhyme when it happens in other places-- their ears hear only a mush. If they can then carry that mush that they hear into their own poetry, more power to them, but it's chancey, and in the end they may not know if they've done it or not. This is my sense, though as always with poetry, there are bound to be some exceptions. There are poets who have poetry without having to work for it, but they are extremely rare and usually die young. It's true that, as Lorca said, we have to go beyond form to the marrow of form. But it seems like some are arguing for shortcuts to profundity by dispensing with the practice of form altogether. They seem to be saying, "Why go through the bother of rigorous meditation for fifty years when one can just wake up in the morning and experience their genius nirvana with their morning coffee?" If everyone arrives at that position, that would be very sad if that happened. But it won't. Vivek jane bhandari wrote: > Adil Jussawalla did a presentation on Robert Graves very recently, > and I assisted him in the same reading by looking at poems by Laura > Riding (who was Graves' consort for several years as well as > collaborating with him on several works) and contemporaries of Laura's > such as Elizabeth Jennings, Edith Sitwell, and Stevie Smith. Graves > started with strict adherence to form and rhyme, as you would expect > from a poet born in the Victorian period (just), but in later years > moved to a more fluid style. Sitwell did much the same, but never > achieved the same fluidity - which is not true of Jennings and Smith, > who were somewhat younger and perhaps less contrained by the old > perception that poetry is a male preserve. You should see my > book-shelves...one shelf for the women poets, four for the men. Not by > choice - there are simply fewer women poets. I think as you get > older form matters less and content, and perhaps visual presentation, > become more important. A more fluid style evolves which does not > always conform to what purists see as immutable rules. Perhaps poetry > as a performing art requires form, while poetry to be read to oneself > can handle a looser style. Yet there is a rhythm inherent in our > speech which translates itself into the most free-style of poetry; I > think if you find a poet lacking inherent rhythm he will be a bad > poet, and a lousy dancer to boot. Check it out: a classical singer > friend showed me how most poetry can be tapped out, to find the beat, > and it is becomes one of the tests of a good poem - but only one. > There has to be imagery too, and I think economy of expression is > good. There is one aspect, however, which is that for quite a number > of Indian poets English is not their first language (jayanta mahapatra > being one) - their inherent speech rhythms may well clash with that of > english; the iambic pentameter does not come naturally to the Indian > tongue. Possibly, then, the song-shythms inherent in their native > tongue would intrude. Perhaps this is what jars, because it sits > uneasily with English. Can you tell me which Indian poets have > thrown the baby out with the bath-water? I don't agree if you include > Nissim Ezekiel, you might as well say TS Eliot too in that case. But > then maybe you don't like either. Regards, Jane Bhandari > > */Rajan Barrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>/* wrote: > > Well Jane, I guess its fine if there are internal rhymes well > yes it can get depressing if there is too much of the end rhymes > but I do not ask the poets to write finished products with rhymes > but try to play with poetry and the rhymescheme. I think we as > indians have thrown the baby out with the bath wate. well yes keki > daruwalla is sensistive to the form. Rajan */ /* > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Yahoo! 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