The Poetry of Form: Physical Structures in the History of Verse with Regan Good

T S Eliot wrote, “To use very strict form is a help, because you concentrate on the technical difficulties of mastering the form, and allow the content of the poem a more unconscious and freer release.” A poetic form is a little recipe, an algorithm in the history of verse. There is nothing poetic about form itself. How does one enable the content—the poetry—to flow within the strictures of a sonnet, or a sestina, or a villanelle? How does poetry result from rules and confinement? We will discuss forms and write our own poems within and outside them. The goal will be to encourage poetic release within the silken cords of form.

Regan Good is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her book The Atlantic House was published in 2011. She has published poems and/or essays in The Paris Review, Field, American Letters & Commentary, Fence, Tin House, and The Winter Anthology.

Register online here.