New Formalism

The New Formalism ( engl. New Formalism ) is a flow and movement of American poetry of the late 20th century and the present, which advocates a resumption of the metrical and rhyming poetry.

Background

Was first used in this context the term ' New Formalism ' in the article The Yuppie Poet in the AWP Newsletter in 1985, the representation should be considered a critique of a movement that returns to traditional poetic forms; the article accused the movement not only political conservatism, but also yuppie materialism.

The New Formalism was a response to various inadequacies looked as characteristics of contemporary poetry. The American writer and critic Michael Dana Gioia wrote in 1987 in his essay Notes on the New Formalism: " The real issues of American poetry of the eighties will become more apparent: the decline of poetic language, the boredom of poetry, the bankruptcy of the confessional poetry, the inability to provide a meaning -bearing aesthetic for new poetic narrative and the denial of musical patterns in contemporary poems., the revival of traditional forms will then be viewed merely as answer to this predicament. "

Despite the formal innovations of modernism, as they were apparently in the works of TS Eliot and Ezra Pound and the widespread use of free verse in the first decades of the 20th century, many poets decided to continue to work primarily with traditional forms - to associated with the New Criticism poets, for example, counted, including John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Anthony Hecht and Richard Wilbur. During the 1960s and with the dominance of confessional poetry publishing form- conscious poetry was increasingly out of fashion. The occurrence of the Language poets in the 1970s was one of the responses to the prevailing informal confessional poetry. However, signified the " Language poets" a further step away from metric and rhyme and her poetry has been partially considered alienation from the readers.

History

An early sign of renewed interest in poetic forms in 1968 was the publication of Lewis Turcos The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics. In the early 1970s XJ Kennedy published the short-lived magazine Counter / Measures, which was devoted to traditional forms of poetry. At this time only a few publishers of this poetry were well-disposed and the main flow was directed against rhyme and meter.

The publication in 1977 of an issue of the Mississippi Review, entitled Freedom and Form: American Poets Respond was an important impetus for the emergence of the New Formalism ' as a separate movement. There followed a series of publications of poetry in traditional form, including Robert B. Shaw Comforting the Wilderness, (1977 ), Charles Martins Room for Error (1978 ) and Timothy Steele's Uncertainties and Rest (1979). 1980 founded Mark Jarman and Robert McDowell, the magazine The Reaper to promote this kind of poetry and traditional prose. Jane Greer published from 1981, the Plains Poetry Journal, also with form- conscious poems. McDowell founded in 1984 the publishing house "Storyline Press," which has since published poet of the new formalism.

The American Professor William Baer founded in 1990, the biannual journal The formalist, which he edited until 2005. The first edition contained, inter alia, Poems of Howard Nemerov, Richard Wilbur and Donald Justice.

The West Chester University held a conference every year since 1995 with a particular focus on formal poetry and New Formalism. As part of this conference every year the Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award is awarded.

Towards the end of the 20th century poems were published in traditional form again on a larger scale. The influence of the movement was also perceived in the mainstream of American poetry: an overview of the anthologies published successively showed an increase of poems in the form of Villa Ella. Also, the number of publications in the literature of scientific papers poetic forms to took.

The American poet Leo Yankevich in 2001 founded the literary magazine The New Formalist, which since then is dedicated to the publication form conscious lyrics.