PART ONE IN AN ONGOING, SERIALIZED DISCUSSION

FIRST

Form in poetry is an interesting concept, but it becomes a little too vague a term when opposed with the vocabulary of design. Everything in the world has form—form is one of the most basic organic (and inorganic, depending on the situation) elements. To recognize a form is to recognize an outline of something—in the vaguest terms, its shape or shadow. Form does not sufficiently account for the intricacies of what goes into the making of a poem. These nuances are better served by DESIGN; every constructed element of a poem takes into account an element of design.

A poem is a made thing.

LINE

The most basic design element of the poem is the LINE. Graphically, a line “is a mark made by a moving point and having psychological impact according to its direction, weight, and the variations in its direction and weight. It can act as as a symbolic language, or it can communicate emotion through its character and direction.”

But the line in poetry may not be so different. In basic terms, the line begins somewhere on the page, ends somewhere on the page, and consists of a variable number of points (words) between. The line is the motion of the poem on the page—and for some poets, a measure of breath, rhythm, meter, or other standardized measurement. Because the poetic line consists of points and transpires over distance (where “distance” consists of length or time), it is a design element of the poem, both visually and aurally. And every poet conceives of line differently, encapsulating in their own understanding of a design for their poem.