Talk:New Formalism

Comments on style

While I probably would have added or eliminated a few things if I had written this piece myself, I think it's fair and balanced as is and a big improvement over earlier drafts. Kudos!!! MaggieTMaggieT 22:13, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

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Article is horribly POV and horribly written. Should be expanded.

Cleanup taskforce

Added to User:Averykrouse/Desk RJFJR 14:37, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I will be looking at this page over the next little bit and making tweaks here and there. Please do not proceed with any content revisions until I am through. There are three objectives I can see with this page:

• Cite resources
• Cite published, notable poets
• Cleanup

As it stands, I have never looked into New Formalism as a movement, but I will be doing a bit of research into the concept, as well as other areas of Wikipedia in which this may better stand. I suggest that anyone wanting to create change in this page first go out and find sources to verify yourself with. Neutral point-of-view does not mean "delete everything you disagree with," it just means edit until all sides of an issue are represented.

As it stands, there aren't really sides to worry about here. We just need verifiable facts. --Avery W. Krouse 20:03, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

This was just added to my desk so I'll be working on the article. At the moment I'm just having a look through at what should be done then I'll start some work. Banana.girl 08:40, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Credentials

What are your credentials, other than you have finished high school? The pared down version tells us all we need to know and offends noone.

For now I suggest we leave it as is.Liteditor

My credentials are that I am currently studying English and American Literature and Language at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and have been using Wikipedia since 2004 with a history of solid edits, including much work on POV and cleanup. I would seriously doubt that this page gets many page hits and it is therefore not necessary to blank it every single time while it is being disputed. If you feel that something is incorrect, please list the faults here and we will attempt to correct them. Otherwise, you are leaning toward the line of three revert rule and I do not wish to see you blocked. Please be civil and remember that Wikipedia is not the place to prove a point. Thank you. --Avery W. Krouse 20:50, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Impressive Credentials, Avery

Snicker

Quite frankly, oh nameless commenter, it was requested on my desk that I come help edit this page. I am a Cleanup Taskforce participant, not an edit war mediator. I will not get involved in this process if it is only going to cause conflict and strife. I am not an arbitrator nor a mediator, get one of those for yourself. I'm a copyeditor. --Avery W. Krouse 21:16, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi

I understand. Well, I look foward to working with you. (Liteditor 23:09, 22 February 2006 (UTC))

Hello

Hey, yeah, Avery took this article of his desk and it has now been passed onto me. I suppose that I'm expected to say why I should do this - well, I am in high school and 15 years old BUT I have been published and go annually to different university courses in Sydney for gifted high schoolers. Im not bragging and I'm sure that other people could do this as well, if not better than me. But I am willing to have a try and do my best. I'm going to try to improve this as much as possible. So I would like to know what people here would like to see done to the article. Will be jotting some stuff here for myself.Banana.girl 08:40, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Banana.girl ... I've been doing my best to expand this article, but I am a little worried that I may only be representing part of the movement: this worry comes from the fact that around the time Avery got involved there was a lot of seemingly heated reverting going on, particularly in respect to a list of prominent poets. Before the article was semi-protected my edits were generally being reverted (by anons or brand new users) and labelled as either 'vandalism' (which they obviously weren't) or as 'pov' (which was certainly not intended). — Stumps 08:48, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok! If you want to add something - ADD IT! Don't worry about POV cos I am sure that it isnt intended. I know that it wouldnt have been vandelism as you came and posted here on the talk page! Thanks for filling me in on all of that. Right now I am familiarising myself with the article and topic and from tommorow I will start some heavy work on it. I will be posting things that need to be done in here - not just for me to boss other people around but also for me. Thanks Banana.girl 09:03, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Hey, yes, there was a bit of conflict and personal attacks going on with User:Liteeditor which no longer seem to be occuring. I myself prefer and lean toward copyedit as far as CT tasks are concerned. But you're doing a fantastic job! --Avery W. Krouse 07:07, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Things to be done

If you can do any of these things, please do. If you can think of other things for the list, please add them. Thanks Banana.girl 13:06, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

• define New Formalism
• neutrality
• basic history of New Formalism
• analyse it - why did this type of poetry return?

Good ideas. However, I think we need to be a bit cautious about having a simple list of New Formalist poets ... that is what seemed to cause all the trouble a few weeks ago. I've been trying to simply mention people who have a verifiable historical role in the movement. One approach I am trying is to create entries for specific anthologies, and we can list the poets there. For example, see Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism. Hope this helps — Stumps 13:31, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Having gone back and read the article, in the light of my comment above, I now feel a little uncomfortable about the list of poets who appeared in the first issue of The Formalist ... inclusion in that particular issue of that particular magazine probably doesn't make anyone 'historically significant'. I'll try to get around to creating an entry for the magazine and moving the list of names there. — Stumps 13:35, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I've deleted the list for the time being and we can get back to that later.Banana.girl 21:39, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Structure of article

I'm going to try putting some structure in the article, along the lines of Banana.girl's 'to do' list above. — Stumps 13:49, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I haven't got enough material do do this yet. Ideas are:

• History: basically the current content of the article
• Precursors: reference to poets associated with New Criticism ... John Crowe Ransom, Anthony Hecht, Allen Tate, Richard Wilbur, early Robert Lowell perhaps??
• Analysis: if we can find any ... remember no original research.

Plus the usual References, Notes, External links etc ... Any other ideas? — Stumps 14:06, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

• How about Background information - so that explains what happened in the lead up to the movement.

Banana.girl 22:56, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

More info

Today I have added a reference to the Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award and the list of anthologies that were used in the 'Defining the Canon' seminar at the 2004 West Chester Conference. That seminar also came up with a draft list of the Top Ten New Formalist Poems:

• 'Sapphics Against Anger' by Timothy Steele
• 'Welcome to Hiroshima' by Mary Jo Salter
• 'The Ballad of Aunt Geneva' by Marilyn Nelson
• 'First Poem for You' by Kim Addonizio
• 'E.S.L.' by Charles Martin
• 'Song of the Powers' by David Mason
• 'Air View of an Industrial Scene' by Andrew Hudgins
• 'Supernatural Love' by Gertrude Schnackenberg

Of course the very idea of such a list is a bit silly, and the process by which it was arrived at was quite possibly rather political and polite. I wouldn't want to elevate the importance of this list by simply pasting it into the article, but I wonder if this is another way in which we can legitimately list some poets without expressing noticable POV??? — Stumps 17:06, 2 March 2006 (UTC) Maybe we could create a new page for this "POets and Poems of New Formalism"? That isnt really POV then? well not on this page! Banana.girl 23:32, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Suggested Reading

This might be helpful ... suggested Reading for New Formalism from North Dakota State University:

• Bruce Bawer. Prophets and Professors. Story Line Press, 1995.
• Philip Dacey and David Jauss, eds. Strong measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms. Harper and Row, 1986.
• Ariel Dawson, “The Yuppie Poet.” AWP. Newsletter. May 1985.
• Tom Disch, The Castle of Indolence, Picador, 1995.
• Wayne Dodd, Toward the End of the Century. University of iowa Press, 1992.
• Frederick Feirstein, ed. (With Frederick Turner), Expanseive Poetry. Story Line Press, 1989.
• Annie Finch, ed., A Formal Feeling Comes:Poems in Form by contemporary Women. Story Line Press, 1989.
• _____. Beyond the New Formalism. Story Line Press, 1997.
• Dana Gioia, Can Poetry Matter? Graywolf Press, 1991.
• Paul Lake, “Toward a Liberal Poetics.” Threepenny Review. Winter 1988.
• _____. “Verse that Print Bred.” Sewanee Review. Fall 1992.
• David Lehman, ed., Estatic Occassions, Expedient Forms. Macmillan, 1987.
• Brad Leithauser, “Metrical Illiteracy.” New Criterion. January 1983.
• _____. “The Confinement of Free Verse.” New Criterion. May 1987.
• Keith Maillard, “The New Formalism and the Return of Prosody.” Antigonish Review. Winter 1995.
• James McCorkle, ed., Conversant Essays: Contemporary Poets on Poetry. Wayne State University Press, 1990.
• Jarman, Mark, and David Mason ed., Rebel Angels. Story Line Press, 1996.
• Robert McDowell, “The Poetry Anthology.” The Hudson Review. Winter 1990.
• Robert McDowell, ed., Poetry After Modernism. Story Line Press, 1990.
• Wade Newman, “An Interview with Frederick Turner.” Soutwest Review. Summer 1986.
• Wyatt Prunty, Fallen From the Symboled World: Precedents for the New Formalism. Oxford, 1990.
• Robert Richman, ed., The Direction of Poetry. Houghton Mifflin, 1988.
• Ira Sadoff, “Neo Formalism: A Dangerous Nostalgia.” American Poetry Review. January— February1990.
• Timothy Steele, Missing Mesures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt Against Meter. University of Arkansas Press, 1990.
• Frederick Turner, Natural Classicism. Paragon House, 1985.
• Diane Wakoski, “The New Conservatism in American Poetry.” American Book Review. May— June1986.
• David Wojahn, “’Yes, But . . .’: Some Thoughts on the New Formalism.” Crazyhorse. Spring 1987.

... — Stumps 10:45, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Wow - Great Work!!

Great work stumps! I am currently doing some research into the topic. This weekend(as in now!) I only have to write a 500 word rationale so I am free to do work on this article all weekend! Thanks for your great work!!!Banana.girl 11:06, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Excellent work, everyone! You keep going and this might eventually become a Featured! --Avery W. Krouse 07:05, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Is POV still disputed?

I have recently expanded the article considerably, and have attempted to express a neutral point of view, and only document verifiable facts with references. Of course, I may well have omitted information that I am unaware of, which may give the article an unintended bias. I am interested to know if anyone currently thinks the article is biased. If so, let's try to make it balanced; if not, let's remove the pov tag. — Stumps 15:36, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Terrific job, Stumps. I'm worried about vandalism but let's give it a go!!!!!!!MaggieT 19:53, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

There is no harm in it! As for Vandalism, we can handle whatever happens! Banana.girl 22:46, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I've removed it. Stumps 06:51, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Sections

I'm going to try to get some sections into this. When looking at it - it just looks like a whole heap to read. Banana.girl 22:53, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Totally agree. I've had a go. — Stumps 06:49, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

List of poets

Perhaps we could create a list of New formalish poets and poems in a new page. it could hardly be classed as pov then? could it? Banana.girl 07:23, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

This sounds like a promising idea ... I'm not sure whether to simply do a 'poets and poems of ..' page, or to hang it on the hook of the (fairly academic) discussion of 'canon formation' whjich I believe is a recurring theme at the West Chester Conference. I'm trying to get a little more historical information from the Conference administration at the moment. I'll also try to have a look around Wikipedia for any parallels. — Stumps 07:36, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok. That sounds like a better idea! Anna 07:40, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not going to be very active in the next few days/weeks cos I am starting at boarding school on sundayBanana.Girl 12:12, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Stumps: I'm in awe--this has gone from crap to the best overview on the subject I know of in a short time! My only suggestion would be to take the bibliography you found above and put it into the text of the article. I think that would help people a lot. Again, nice work! PS: I'm still trying to fill out the poets and institutions of New Formalism, and did Charles Martin today and RS Gwynn yesterday.MaggieT 17:55, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Provisional reversion of Turco material

I've for the time being reverted the following additions, added by an anonymous user ... on the basis that I suspect they violate NVOP, pushing exclusively Lewis Turco's place in history ... the text of the additions was as follows: "The first book to be published in the movement was Lewis Turco's T'he Book of Forms, A Handbook of Poetics (E. P. Dutton) in 1968. It went into a second edition, The New Book of Forms (University Press of New England), in 1986 and The Book of Forms, Third Edition (UPNE) appeared in 2000. ... A formalist college textbook, also by Turco, Poetry: An Introduction through Writing (Reston) appeared in 1973 ... Beginning in 1983 and continuing through 1986 Lewis Turco began to mention the new movement "Neo-Formalism" in his annual poetry roundups, 'The Year in Poetry' in The Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbooks (Gale Research)". Stumps (talk) 01:48, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

As material was reinstated by user Lewis Turco I have now had a first attempt at reworking the text a little to fit into the flow of the paragraphs, and have moved some of the more peripheral material into footnotes. Not sure if I've got the balance right yet. Stumps (talk) 01:19, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Free verse is not poetry and those who write it are not poets

I have put the entry back as some one said it is not about formalism but the entry is about formalism in that formalism is about metre and so any thing not written in metre is not poetry-by the standard definition of poetry.

the entry reads

POETRY-OR-PROSE-POETRY-IN-DECLINE-THE-RISE-OF-PROSE-OR-THE-END-OF-POETRY "A critique which shows that according to the standard definition of poetry ie in metre free verse is not poetry and those who write it ie Walt Whitman , T S Eliot etc are not poets. Thus most modernist poetry is not really poetry at all but only prose"

I reverted your edit before seeing this comment here. Please use edit summaries when editing so this could be avoided in the future. As for the content of the edit, this wikipedia article is about the New Formalism movement, not a debate about whether formalism (or rather, non-formalism/free verse) in general is valid poetry or not. Besides being badly written and using an inline external links instead of reference (see WP:ELPOINTS), it is just not needed. Putting that in here just seems to be soapboxing. Thank you. -- JoannaSerah (talk) 17:40, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

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Major Clean-up Required

As somebody who is wanting to know more about New Formalism (and as somebody who might be considered to be a New Formalist), this article is very un-organized, as the second paragraph in the article seems like it should be later, and the 'Poetry Wars' isn't necessary to be bold (correct me if I'm wrong). All in all, it might reflect the debate and history of the movement more succinctly. Any discussion? 𝕋𝕙𝕖ℙ𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕖𝕥𝕒𝕣𝕚𝕒𝕟 (talk) 01:58, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

The Lead for this article seems very POV, and more like a ad hominem feud, with very strong language; Free-verse poets call formalist poets Nazis, while formalist poets call the free-verse poets Nazis. Also, none of those statements are verified, and are up to question and doubt. If they are actual quotations, shouldn't they be in a "Controversy" section of the article? 𝕋𝕙𝕖ℙ𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕖𝕥𝕒𝕣𝕚𝕒𝕟 (talk) 14:10, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Unfortunately the article has hardly been edited by anyone over the past year except for User:K1ngstowngalway1, who has made hundreds of major rewrites without any edit summaries. In its current form I fear it's closer to an WP:ORIGINAL essay than a WP:NPOV encyclopedia article. -φθόγγος 15:41, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Well, if you feel that a major clean up is needed, go right ahead. One possibility, though, would be to divide it into an article about New Formalism and another about The Poetry Wars. K1ngstowngalway1 (talk) 19:30, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

@K1ngstowngalway1: have you considered stepping away from this article? It's really not a useful or good article at this stage, seeing as it is constructed of original research and quotations. I'm going to have a look at the history and see if there is something it can be rolled back to that doe not contain so many quotations and original research. What we have here is a long meandering un-encyclopedic essay, essentially. I am really at a loss to extract even the most basic piece of information about the topic from the 110KB monster that this article now is. --- Possibly (talk) 01:53, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

@K1ngstowngalway1: Yes, we could divide it, but I'd rather just see a much more simplified and up-to-standard wikipedia page that is properly formatted, written, and cited, for easy access.

Rolled back to prior version

I rolled the article back to the last version before K1ngstowngalway1's (and also K1ngstowngalway's) edits, as, to be frank, I don't think their edits have improved the article.

• Older Version that I have rolled back to
• Version with K1ngstowngalway1 edits and large amount of quoiting and Original research

Please discuss. Pinging @Phthoggos, ThePlanetarian, and K1ngstowngalway1:. --- Possibly (talk) 01:53, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

I will take a look at it today. I agree that the editor in question (K1ngstowngalway1) did not improve the article (edit: from a writing standpoint, I should clarify, though he gave a lot that could be used in a better article) . I think that his edits would need to be scaled back and refined for Wikipedia use. 𝕋𝕙𝕖ℙ𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕖𝕥𝕒𝕣𝕚𝕒𝕟 (talk) 17:30, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

So, I glanced over the older version, and it seems like a good place to start. We could refine the history that K1ngstowngalway1 supplied, so that it would be in shorter paragraphs and less quotations. K1ngstowngalway1 has also supplied modern history to the article as well, but as noted previously, it needs refinement.𝕋𝕙𝕖ℙ𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕖𝕥𝕒𝕣𝕚𝕒𝕟 (talk) 17:42, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Goia

I have seen some users argue about the paragraphs citing Goia or citing things about Goia. I think those should be kept, as Goia is an important player in New Formalism. 𝕋𝕙𝕖ℙ𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕖𝕥𝕒𝕣𝕚𝕒𝕟 (talk) 01:48, 4 March 2022 (UTC)