Performing Form

[sirenoftitan1]

Let's talk for a minute about performing formal pieces (and for once in my life, I don't mean Limericks).  If you write a sonnet or a pantoum or a sestina, the form should be, in theory, integral to the piece, not just something you've slapped on to show what you can do with line breaks or meter or whatever.  So, when you perform it, how do you

Comments

[nerak_g]

Hmmm...I don't know, but as a listener, I think the piece "works" when you don't really realize there's a form. You might notice a repetition & it works in your head to get it in a kind of subliminal way. I think of Lucy Anderton's "Eve's Sestina For Adam" which I didn't realize was a sestina until I saw the title.

[sirenoftitan1]

Interesting, interesting. I chose a sestina for a certain poem because it was inspired by the fact that my dad is constantly talking about cancer, so it seemed like a form that repeats certain things throughout was reflective of that idea. Obviously, the repetition is still there even if nobody recognizes it as a sestina, though.

[theflyingrabbit]

I feel like that if the form is well-attended to, the music and rhetoric inherent to the form will be apparent. (Ever heard Marc do Shakespeare or Ogden Nash?) I'm currently rehearsing a pantoum, and, like you, I hate it when poets *explain* the form as if they should get favor for using it. I wrote the pantoum because I was comparing two similar incidents and realized a pantoum would make the comparison interesting. So when i perform it, I read it like I read any other poem -- ignoring the line breaks and repetition and using the English grammar and syntax (periods, commas, etc) to determine where I start and stop, and how I emphasize. I think that actually allows the music in the poem to come out and not sound like a nursery rhyme.

[sirenoftitan1]

Also a sestina for me, in this case. I feel like pantoums are something you catch on to in the second or third stanza, but sestinas are REALLY subtle when read.