Poets and Poems: Paul Willis and "Losing Streak"

Free verse has reigned supreme in poetry for more than a century. It’s difficult for my contemporary mind to experience a formal, more traditional poem (the kind written for at least 3,000 years) as either “that’s how they used to write poems” or “this is going to be a humorous poem.” Rhyming poems seem to lend themselves to humor (think limericks), irony, or even popular songs. 

Yet I know full well that contemporary formalist poetry lives and flourishes; it’s even considered something of a movement. Simply read Dana Gioia, Mark Jarman, Brad Leithauser, or Mary Jo Salter, to mention only a few formalist poets. And Losing Streak, the new poetry collection by Paul Willis, falls comfortably into that category of formalism.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Emily Dickinson was no recluse – Claire Lowdon at The Spectator.

 

Robert Frost’s accidental late start – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Watching My Children Play in a Graveyard – poem by Shaun Duncan at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Rain on Us (A Sunday Psalm) – Jerry Barret at Gerald the Writer.

 

Three Poets Painting with Agnes Martin’s Brush – Heidi Seaborn at The Adroit Journal.

 

At Six Months – poem by Pia Purpura at Every Day Poems.

Poets and Poems: Daniel Leach and “Voices on the Wind”

Some 40 years ago, a new school of poetry emerged, one that today we’d call retro. Named the “New Formalism,” its poets engaged with traditional poetic forms, ones where meter and rhyme were integral. The best-known of the New Formalists are Dana Gioia, Mark Jarman, Molly Peacock, Phillis Levin, and Timothy Steele. They come from varied backgrounds, but they were all generally part of the Baby Boom generation, born in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Daniel Leach

Another name for New Formalism might be “classical poetry,” the poetry that many of us grew up with in English and literature classes, like the sonnets of William Shakespeare and Philip Sidney, the epic poetry of John Milton, the story poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the traditional poetry of Sara Teasdale, Emily Dickinson, and Edgar Lee Masters. Modernism, led by T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and Dylan Thomas, was in many ways a full-scale assault on traditional and classical poetry.

One of the unexpected benefits of the internet and social media has been the renewed interest in poetry, and that includes classical poetry. Related to the New Formalism, classical poetry is beginning something of its own revival, and classical poets are finding each other and new platforms to publish their work. These include the Society of Classical Poets and The Chained Muse.

Poet Daniel Leach publishes classical poems on both as well as others.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Poets and Poems: Rhina Espaillat and “And After All”

Rafael Trujillo is a name long forgotten today, but he ruled the Dominican Republic as dictator for more than three decades, from 1930 to 1961. His was a bloody, vicious regime, and he exported violence to Haiti, Venezuela, Mexico, and even the United States via assassinations of his political enemies. Two years into his rule, Rhina Espaillat was born (1932), A few short years later, her great-uncle opposed the regime, and the entire family was exiled. They settled in New York City.

Espaillat began writing poetry as a young girl, and she wrote in both Spanish and English. She’s still writing today poetry today, and her most recent collection is And After All: Poems. Nothing in the work indicates a connection to Trujillo, but one can’t help but think that the experiences of life under a dictator followed by exile can’t help but affect what a poet writes, including a focus on what’s inside as opposed to what’s visible for all to see.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.