Escape artist bemoans the bonds of form poetry

So, imagine that all of form poetry was a giant wall made of uneven bricks, lots of little chips and edges and things. Now imagine me trying to write a ghazal by slamming my head repeatedly against that wall as if I’m suddenly going to shatter it. You know, if I keep slapping my forehead against those bricks for an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, a century, whatever. One day that wall will crumple, right? It has to, eventually.

It’s entirely the restriction of the rhyme and the refrain; if you don’t pick the absolute perfect one, you’re stuck in this mire of convoluted lines jammed inexpertly into a formalist hole that winds up swollen and sore.

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