According to Edward Hirsch, the history of poetry is one of change and evolution, and now is no different. To hear him tell it, poet is alive. And he would know: he’s the Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the President of the Guggenheim Foundation. But first and foremost, Hirsch is a champion of the power of verse. He set out to prove it with definitive flair in his new book, “The Poet’s Glossary,” a 700-page all-things-poetry encyclopedia. In it, he strives to identify and define poet forms. He says, “There has never been a culture without poetry. There has to be a reason for that.”
I sat down with Hirsch to find out more about the function of poetic form.
These transcript highlights have been edited for clarity and length.
Steve Paulson: The way you’ve constructed your poet’s glossary is it’s arranged alphabetically. So, we should start at the beginning. Your very first entry is the word “abecedarian.” What does that mean?
Edward Hirsch: It is an alphabetic acrostic in which each line or stanza begins with a successive letter of the alphabet. You begin with “A” and the second with “B” and the third line with “C” - like that. And, it turns out this form is a very ancient form and is often employed for sacred works. For example, there are alto of AA in the Hebrew bible that are alphabetical. Psalm 119 consists of 22, 8 line stanzas - one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. I think that it is interesting that poets, often in religious traditions felt the need to organize their poems or their prayers in alphabetical order and follow the structure of this form.
SP: I can imagine the response you get from a lot of contemporary poets today is that it sure sounds restrictive to have to follow form. What the point? Why work within this ancient tradition where there are so many rules?
EH: It’s true that many poets rebel against the forms — the tradition forms. And of course they are restrictive. But they are also liberating.
SP: Has that been true with your own work as a poet?
EH: Very much so. Not entirely but often working in a form leads you to something you would not have gotten to otherwise.
SP: Can you give me an example?
EH: The sonnet form was created by a group of notaries in Sicily in the 13th century. They were legal minds. But what they hit upon was the subject of courtly or erotic love. And what they somehow unraveled was that you could create a logical structure to deal with an illogical subject. And I’ve often found that when you want to make the case, want to create an argument in a poem, especially a love poem you can structure the experience and call on the history of poetry by writing a sonnet.
So too a traditional form like the villanelle - a recurrent form which is song like and may have had its roots in song is a song that repeats two lines so obsessively that its very strong for the subject of los because it keeps bringing it back. And so the great VV, say, Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gently into that good night” or Elizabeth Bishops “One Art” are VV of loss. And so if you have a poem that you are trying to think through about loss then the VV is there for you as a form to try an create it, structure it, articulate it, dramatize it, through a traditional form.
Below you can listen to the full interview with Hirsch on a "A Poet's Glossary," or to hear an earlier interview about his poem "Gabriel."