{Journal Entry #7} Are "forms" passé?

Spoiler alert: no.

As I was preparing the review entries in a desperate attempt not to fail, I did not get the chance to muse on our discussions on forms, so I though I would dedicate them an entry now.

(1) The Ode

As a Chilean, I've known about odes from a very young age. Pablo Neruda, one of our formerly most lauded poets (whose public figure and legacy has undergone a turn and now is divisive, to say the least) wrote the ode on the picture above, celebrating french fries. Whatever you think of him, I think this particular ode is brilliant. It is tongue in cheek in its subject, sure, but it's sincere. I believe this sincerity makes the hyperboles work, together with the alteration of sounds and the line breaks, which call to mind the image of the fries sizzling and then descending onto the plate. 

In my opinion, it's a vindication of the form. As nowadays it seems naïve or plain outdated to elevate something to "ode" status, but I think there is value in rescuing the beauty of a simple/common thing (as it has been done in many different literary movements throughout the past few centuries) and honoring it with truthful homage. 

This does not mean there can't be great subversions of the genre also. Robert Creeley's America can be described even as an anti-ode, rebellious and angry in its use of apostrophe, demanding America  to "give back the people you took", "let the sun shine again / on the four corners of the world", "Give back / what we are, these people you made". 

Similarly, Robert Pinksy's Ode to Meaning is a denunciation of Religious Meaning (of any religion, interestingly enough). The poem is too long to include here, but I do want to include the last stanzas, which are sad, angry and beautiful. 

(2) The Sonnet

The sonnet is perhaps the most. I already looked at Denis Johnson's take, but I would like to include this classic Shakespeare because it's just lovely:

The fact that the turn does, to a degree, become a reality (we are reading the poem, so we are giving life to the subject) only makes it better and more heartwarming.

Then there is the villanelle, the only one that kind of makes me a hypocrite, because I did not connect with any of the more traditional ones, but I would be persuaded to check out some more (perhaps with musical accompaniment). I did highlight two of my favorites in my Villanelle 101 entry, both more modern pieces that play on the form.

Either way, as a student of literature after postmodernity, it can be easy to discard genres altogether, but I see value in them. Not only in subverting them, but in legitimately looking at contemporary situations/objects/feelings through the lens of these historically-charged forms. To me, form will never be passé no matter how much fragmentation it undergoes. Even if you take something apart time after time, putting it back together to admire it in a new context will never be a waste of creativity and imagination.