One of the most famous shape poems is George Herbert’s “Easter Wings”: http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/herbert/wings.htm

which, when printed on its side, resembles two pair of wings. However, the shape and the words work together, with longer lines and shorter lines reflecting the meaning and gravity Herbert intended.

For something more modern, the cinquain form (5 lines or 2, 4, 6, 8, and 2 syllables, in iambic meter) probably needs to be seen to best appreciate it. I’ve had three published at “Amaze, the Cinquain Journal (don’t have the URL handy). The importance of the message should build from the first line to the fourth, as the syllable count per line builds, then the fifth line becomes a “denoument” of sorts, or an ironic throwback to the first line, or a volta–an unexpected twist. The form looks deceptively easy, but the requirements put a premium on word choice.

DAT

I agree with DAT, but if I had to choose…

Delightfully, Dr. Seuss, because you can walk up and down his words like stairs. But even he did not neglect catching rhythms and rhyming words that rolled off the tongue. Too many have tried to change the definition of poetry without realizing the only way to do it is to change the medium, itself. How many children have accidently rhymed two words and proudly announced, “Hey– I made a poem!” Even in their eyes, a poem is a poem.

Looks are not enough for this most powerful of mediums, as evidenced by how few people consistently read them anymore. Little books of best-loved poems used to be traveler’s companions as they set out on dangerous seas, or wilderness places,or even in the pockets of soldiers. Those poems were small distillations of life, brought into perfect focus — just for a moment. Done well, that was all it took to perfectly connect one scene or one thought to a reader’s soul. What connects with our souls we don’t lightly let go of.

Poetry used to be wildly popular. Back then, rhyme and meter had a familiar ring, like a neighbor come calling, and readers were pleasantly pre-conditioned to “hurry to open their doors.” Poems seemed more welcome in those days. One often found tattered scraps of them in old Bibles, or boxes that only grown children have courage enough to sift through.

Maybe I’ve just become more critical as I get older. But maybe I’m not alone. Because when any person of this new millineum can type the single word, “If” into a search box that sifts through millions of information bits and still come back — IN A MOMENT — with Rudyard Kipling’s classic poem by that title, written in 1899… that tells me there are a lot of other readers out there that really haven’t changed so much, either. And somehow it reassures me to know that no matter how much milk keeps being forced on us, these days… cream still rises to the top.

While I agree with you that both life and literature of today are “ever straining toward new forms,” I wonder if it is actually possible to change the definition of poetry, itself, when it has meant something specific to us for so long. Yes, looks can fool you. But decline in the popularity of modern poetry proves that they can’t for very long.

Ann

I’m not a big fan of “shape” poetry, or poetry that requires eyes to be focused on paper or pixels to understand it’s a poem. Originally all poetry was oral, broken into lines and provided with meter to facilitate memorization and recitation. Rhyme came much later, to provide a sonic effect that meter alone didn’t provide.

When I see a poem that demands that the shape or length of lines be known through seeing it to bring out it’s full meaning, I usually pass over it.

DAT