Rationale
What is Form and Why Teach It?
Middle school students in my classroom have always responded positively to the study of contemporary free verse poetry and to opportunities for writing this type of poetry. I have found ways to help them develop an understanding and even an intimacy with many poetic elements, especially image, metaphor, tone, and theme. Before writing this unit, I attempted to think through why I and so many teachers at my level avoid the discussion of form in poetry. First of all, the very notion of form sounds restrictive and my students already resist the idea that there is a craft to be learned when writing poetry. I thought that the notion of form might inhibit their poetry writing even more. The very idea of too many "rules" seemed stifling and frustrating. Secondly, I have avoided teaching the importance of form because I lacked an understanding of its relevance to meaning and the overall impact of the poem. Finally, I have avoided dealing with the concept of form, and especially specific structures, because form always seemed out of fashion in the world of contemporary poets, which is essentially the world I am familiar with.
As my own experiences with poetry widened and my understanding of poetry matured, I began to understand that even in the free verse that my students love, form is an extremely important element of the poem. All of the negatives related to teaching about form in the middle school classroom mentioned in the previous paragraph seem now to be less important. I really believe that the concept of form can be presented to students in a non-threatening way, without repression of creativity. Concerning my second anti-form notion, later in this curriculum unit I will discuss more fully the concept of form affecting the overall impact of the poem. Regarding the "out of fashion" argument, I am beginning to hear of many young contemporary poets becoming interested in form, even specific forms from our poetic history. A final reason for placing more emphasis on form in my classroom is that some of my students demonstrate a real affinity for rhyme and form. I have had students who could write with a fair amount of ease a sonnet, a sestina, or beautifully rhymed couplets. I never quite knew what to make of these students and now I feel I have a better respect for their approach to poetry.
So what is form in poetry? The term form in its most general sense means structure. We use the word form to relate to buildings, natural phenomenon, as well as to the shaping of ideas. Our understanding of the word in these contexts is connected to the use of the word in regards to poetry. It is the architecture of the poem. We have all heard of specific structures and historical forms of poetry such as blank verse, couplets, tercets, quatrains, sonnets, villanelles, and sestinas. But the term form is also used to refer to other elements of poetry that exist within poems such as cadence, meter, tropes, play on words, stanza, rhyme, and line.
The idea that writers of free verse employ form is confusing to many students because they are so used to regarding form as a regulated and specific structure. Contemporary scholars of poetry sometimes use the terminology "open form" instead of "free verse," to acknowledge that free verse also has form. Free verse may have freedom from traditional meter or versification, but the line and variations on enjambment are extremely important. Paul H. Fry, in a Yale New Haven Teachers Institute called Reading Poetry of All Kinds: Pictures, Places and Things, People, explained that a poet ends a line because a unit of meaning has been created. In free verse the tension between what the line says and what the sentence says is of utmost importance.
Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, in Understanding Poetry, remind us that "no form-no poem" (1976, p. 560). W.H. Auden said, "In poetry you have a form looking for a subject and a subject looking for a form. When they come together successfully you have a poem." Frances Mayes, in her book The Discovery of Poetry, (2001, p. 302) states that the poem's form and content are "interactive systems…The form of a good poem occurs simultaneously with the meaning, not as a separate phenomenon." These three passages could be mounted in the classroom as a reminder to students that form is not an element to be taken lightly.
Given my new understanding of the importance of form to all poetry, why did I decide to use a study of the sonnet to introduce students to this concept? Most importantly, when reading sonnets, it should be fairly easy for students to make inferences about the effect of the structure on the overall poem. But there are other reasons for choosing the sonnet. The sonnet's structure is straightforward and easily grasped. The sonnet has lasted for centuries and examples proliferate. Later in the unit, in the section called The Sonnet's Structure, reasons for this popularity are discussed. There are interesting models throughout history of adaptations made to the sonnet's form. The sonnet is an important poetic form for basic cultural literacy. Plus, studying the sonnet and writing sonnets can be just plain fun for students.
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