not true

Too much of formal poetry is not true to the individual or to the world— it’s only true to its form.

design + build

Another way to think of poetic form: Not as a template passed down through time, but something designed and built by the language of a particular poem.

curse of verse

Formal poems that put perfection of form above poetic essence, fail as poems.

comes with the territory

It’s rare to find a formal poem that doesn’t sound stilted in places.

comic turn

After modernism, formal poetry became a special case of light verse.

line too far

A fifteenth line was called for, so it wasn’t a sonnet after all.

numbers game

Sonneteers are numerologists convinced of the magical power of fourteen.

freedom in form

There is such a complete freedom now-a-days in respect to technique that I am rather inclined to disregard form so long as I am free and can express myself freely. I don't know of anything, respecting form, that makes much difference. The essential thing in form is to be free in whatever form is used. A free form does not assure freedom. As a form, it is just one more form. So that it comes to this, I suppose, that I believe in freedom regardless of form.

—Wallace Stevens, "A Note on Poetry," Opus Posthumous (Knopf, 1957).