An Exaltation of Forms:

Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art

Edited by Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Meters

Accentual Verse      Dana Gioia

Syllabics: Sweeter Melodies     Margaret Holley

Counted Verse: Upper Limit Music     Paul Hoover

Iambic Meter    John Ridland

Blank Verse     Anthony Hecht

Anapestics     Charles O. Hartman

Trochaic Meter: Running with Abandon     Carl Phillips

Dactylic Meter: A Many-Sounding Sea     Annie Finch

Free Verse    Michelle Boisseau

Hendecasyllabics      Rachel Hadas

Quantitative Meter, including Alcaics     Rosanna Warren

Some Maverick Meters      John Frederick Nims

2. Stanzas

Heroic Couplet: "The Bravest Sort of Verses"    Timothy Steele

Terza Rima: The Self-Engendering Muse    Felix Stefanile

Quatrain     John Hollander

Sapphics     Grace Schulman

Ottava Rima    Jacqueline Osherow

Spenser¹s Eponymous     R. S. Gwynn

Décima: a Poetic Journey from Spain to New Mexico     Pat Mora

3. Received Forms

Folk Ballad     W.D. Snodgrass

Ballade: Exquisite Intricacy    Judith Barrington

Blues    Raymond Patterson

Carmena Figurata: Taking Shape    Jan D. Hodge

Epigram: Gists, Piths, and Poison-Pills     X.J. Kennedy

Ghazal: To Be Teased Into DisUnity     Agha Shahid Ali

Haiku     Jean Hyung Yul Chu

Hip Hop Rhyme Formations     Tracie Morris

Japanese-Style Linked Forms     William J. Higginson/Penny Harter

Clerihew & Limerick     Gail White

Litany Poem: A Wand Made of Words     Nancy Willard

Musical Form and Formalist Poetry     Rob Hardin

Pantoum: Postcolonial Pedigree     Vince Gotera

Prose Poem: Strange Tales and Bitter Emergencies
Maxine Chernoff/Michel Delville

The Metrics of Rap     D.J. Renegade

Rondeaus and Roundels     Tom Disch

Sestina: The End Game     Lewis Turco

The Sonnet     Marilyn Hacker

Triolet: Trippingly on the Tongue    Kathleene West

Villanelle: Gymnastics     Maxine Kumin

4. Principles for Formal Experimentation

Organic Form      Hilda Morley

Fractal Amplifications     Alice Fulton

Performance Poetry     Bob Holman

Beyond Found Poetry     Keith Tuma

List poem     David Lehman

Procedural Poetry: Intentions of Nonintention    Jena Osman

Nude Formalism: A Sampler    Charles Bernstein

Oulipian Poetry     Aldon Neilsen

Fluency of Form: Three Inventions

Two American Verse Forms:
The Cinquain and the Quattern      Allison Joseph

The Low Coup as a Contemporary African American
Verse Form     Amiri Baraka

The Paradelle     Billy Collins

Predetermined Avant Garde Forms    Mark Wallace

Bibliography: Sources for Further Reading

Contributors

Acknowledgements

Index