photo by Sharon McGauley

Timothy Steele gave a talk yesterday on the pleasures of metrical writing. This was a topic that many of the poets touched on throughout the day in their readings and panel discussions. In fact, Rhina Espaillat quipped that she invented meter as a schoolgirl when she first discovered rhythmical pattern (ta-tum ta-tum ta-tum ta-tum) in the poetry her teacher read. In the same panel, Maxine Kumin was quick to correct Espaillat that she beat her to it ten years prior when she invented meter. This pursuit of shapeliness, form, movement, and music is at the very heart of writing poetry.

For Steele, it is essential that poets today not abandon meter completely. It is not enough for young readers and writers to go back to old masters of verse such as Shakespeare for this metrical pleasure. There must be a spark of emulation from today's living writers for the next generation of poets to use meter in a way that is relevant and modern.

Meter is an enchanting fusion of order and disorder, Steele explained. It is a sensuous purchase on language. Meter is set. Irregularity is presented with words, phrases, and syntax. It is not necessary to analyze rhythm, per se. One can let it happen. Maxine Kumin also noted that form is used and complied with, but also violated.

Yusef Komunyakaa likened poetry to carpentry. In both pursuits there are a particular set of tools at hand to create something that functions. Each is admired for its precision in composition. He noted the visceral use of the hands in both pursuits as messengers of the brain formed through accidental perfection. For Komunyakaa, energy is the soul of poetry.

Steele asserted that meter stops you and asks you to check your inspiration. It is an instrument of discovery. It is meter that gives a poem its shape. Metrical pleasure is what allows a poem to seep into your consciousness time and again, recalling upon it in moments of joy or sorrow.