Author's
Statement about Poetics
for
Contemporary Authors
TIMOTHY STEELE
ecause comparatively few poets today write in meters, rhymes, and stanzas,
my use of these has resulted in my being labeled a "formalist." But I
find this term meaningless and even objectionable. It suggests, among
other things, an interest in style rather than substance, whereas I believe
that the two are mutually vital in any successful poem. I employ the traditional
instruments of verse simply because I love the symmetries and surprises
that they produce and because meter especially allows me to render feelings
and ideas more flexibly and precisely than I otherwise could. This preference
is personal and aesthetic, however; I have never imagined that it provided
me with access to cultural or spiritual virtue. And despite allegations
to the contrary about Missing
Measures, I have never said that vers libre is somehow
wrong and immoral or that meter is somehow right and pure. The experimental
school of Pound, Eliot, Lawrence, and Williams has its own beauties and
achievements. But we can prize them justly and build on them, it seems
to me, only if we retain a knowledge and appreciation of the time-tested
principles of standard versification. Free verse cannot be free, unless
there is something for it to be free of.
