Dark Space

I see my hand in the dark,
Watch my fingers move in
the pitch black.
The curtains shut, the cover
over head.
The heat and motion...
alone...
too many pauses...
Feeling space;
with that other sense.

What's Form Go To Do (Go To Do) With It

About a year ago, I was part of a conversation where somebody said: 'Poetry is just used as a warm up to prose.' And I was outraged. I thought it was the most closed minded thing I'd ever heard. Poetry is not just an exercise writers use so as to make their prose better. It, in no way, comes second to prose or is beneath it in anyway. It is a delicate art which in many ways is far more beautiful than prose. While prose is certainly a better medium for writing realism and, arguably, is a better way to frame a narrative. Prose and poetry are both just as important in terms of literary form as each other, and while writing poetry may make you better at writing prose, this is just as much the case in reverse. I'm sure writing prose would make someone a better poet, practice helps any writer. But this got me thinking, about literary form as a whole. And then simply about form in terms of expression. Why does a person, a creative individual, choose poetry to express their love, or prose to write their grand narrative? Why art or music, or drama or film? Where does photography come into the mix? What about comic books? The question of form has begun to baffle me. If I were to explain what a poem is to an alien would they understand at all. Or would it just seem a very convoluted means of expression. Why not just say what you feel. Where is the line between art and communication. Where does a tweet end and a haiku begin? How do we rank the forms, in term of impact, clearness of message, the emotions they can incite? I’m sure all these questions have been asked before, but not by me, so I’m going to try and write some of my thoughts on form. 

As I was first coming to learn about literature I was taught, not quiet so outright but pretty much without exception, that there were three forms of literary expression: Prose, Poetry and Drama. They weren't necessarily separate, they all borrow from each other and can mix together quiet easily. Visually this is how I imagined it:

For me, a writer like Shakespeare would be placed somewhere just left of Drama, as he  sometimes write sonnets into the dialogue of his plays, therefore showing poetic influence in his work. Or the victorian Dramatic monologue, which was like a soliloquy, but written as a poem, would probably be in the middle of the two. In the dead centre of the triangle, they’d be works like ‘The Waves’ by Virginia Woolf, which she herself described as a hybrid of these three forms, or ‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce, who borrows literary devices from every form. Some novels use very poetic and symbolic language, putting them lower than the very top of the triangle. And so on. And thats all I thought there was to it, every piece of literature could be placed somewhere on the graph. At least that’s how I saw it in my head, in reality it’s obviously much more complex than that even if you limit form to these three forms. And that was that, I went about my life happy to think that it all tied up so neatly. 

But then recently in another conversation I asked: 'What is the best literary form?’ I was baiting for an argument but I got a response close to this: 'Poetry, Prose, Drama, Comic Books, they're all as important as each other'. I agreed of course so there was not much of an argument at all, but two words got me thinking; comic books? I've always argued that comics should be seen as literature. I shout people down, talk about key examples and talk about how when the novel first came about it was ridiculed in a similar way. But, it's never entered my brain that there are four distinct forms of literature instead of three. But how does that fit onto my head graph? My initial thoughts are below:

But, I don’t agree that comics are a straight hybrid of art of and prose. There is much more to them than that. There’s a preciseness to the words that is similar to poetry. And the link between visual and  dialogue is something we see in drama. As well as this there are unique features. I’ve recently been reading ‘Understanding Comics’ by Scott McCloud, he explains how there is something very different in the way time passes in a comic that doesn’t really come from anywhere else. Besides, some early examples of comics predate the existence of the novel. So to say it is simply the bastard child of two other forms is a bit to simplistic. I debated added a venn diagram about how the five (including art) intersected in my head, but then I thought it would probably get a bit complex. But in this decision I came to a small conclusion,  all of these forms, and more, flow into each other a lot less neatly. Poetry has it’s influence on musical lyrics, but its an auditory form. Drama lead to film in a very obvious way, but film as since evolved a lot since then. As much as I’d like to make it so, form is not that easy to organise. 

However, another question I want to ask is this: Can something be formless? I’m looking around the room I’m sitting in and can’t find something nearby that is formless. There is a newspaper full of ‘articles’, a ‘letter’ from the gas company, and a take out ‘menu’. What is formless. Is that even possible. Is a conscious hybrid formless, because it doesn’t stick to one specific form. No not really. Taking the early examples of Joyce and Woolf, they are both published and read as novels. And Dramatic Monologues are read of poetry. Shakespeare’s plays are still plays even with poems inserted inside. So what is formless. Is that even possible. Surly anything with a purpose has a form. And everything has a purpose. I mean if I just aimless write words one after the other, does that have form? To me it does, to me its a poem with a statement about form. By trying to be non deliberate, I’ve been deliberate. I can’t thing of a way to write, or create, something formless without it then ascertaining a form. Why even get caught up on form? Why not just create, and land on the form that you land on. What’s more important, form or content? Well thats an age old question. But how do people actually answer? Would Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 be as powerful if it were written in prose: “I would compare you to a summers day, but your much better than that,” just does not have the same ring. However, does this work in reverse. Would “You’re okay, a pretty average girl” make a good sonnet? I’m going to say it probably would not. 

I imagine that part of the reason for peoples choice in form comes down to the reasons any of us choose to be what we want to be. I was never good at art, so that was never a form I choose. However I choose to write, and worked on it, and am still working on it. The specific literary form I choose for a piece seems to fall into place naturally. Sometimes I begin to write something and think it would work better in a different form, often its that an idea doesn’t lead itself to being as long as what I thought it would be. I don’t know if this is the case for everyone, whether what the form to use comes naturally or not. And historically if a new form came about, or a new movement within a form, it came about due to necessity. Art had lost interest in realism by the time it turned to the abstract. So maybe this is the case with form on a personal level as well; I need to get this idea, this image, this message, out of my head, and in putting it down the form comes without really thinking to much. Even more complex forms, like sonnets, seems to come naturally. As I write, I think, okay this is turning into a sonnet. And of course I have to put conscious effort in to get the rhyme scheme and syllable count right, but there is always a moment where the poem almost tells me what form it wants to be in. 

Interestingly, Scott McCloud writes about the creative process in 'Understanding Comics'. He describes how the process contains six steps: 1) Idea/Purpose, 2) Form, 3) Idiom, 4) Structure, 5) Craft, and 6) Surface. However, he writes that often a creative individual begins at 'Surface', which is to say the superficial elements of a work. 'That's a pretty picture but what does it mean?', is essentially what he means by this. We may fall in love with writing novels because we read one which we can recognise a certain amount of polish in, a description we find particularly beautiful, or dialogue which sounds in our ears. He also writes that sometimes the idea, a core motif or ideal, can come last. I might have a novel, with a chapter by chapter structure worked out, key descriptions in place, which also fits a genre (or idiom), but what is that novel saying? Maybe nothing. That does not make it bad of course, but it does lack something. His ideas on form in the creative process are intriguing, as he writes about how for some form comes first. Which in a more general sense it does, as I choose literature to express myself before I had many projects underway, but his perspective and theory is intriguing.    

Being inspired by tradition is also interesting in terms of form. And I think T.S. Eliot summed up the relationship between tradition and the individual pretty well in his essay 'Tradition and Individual Talent', in which he wrote that the creative individual should be well versed in all literature (I suppose is they are a writer) as far back as you can go. For the most part when it comes to mastering form the first thing someone does it look back. "How am I suppose to write like that?" I think when I read something I've really loved. But I think this only constructs are understanding of form. I perfectly understand the form of a sonnet, but I would never use Shakespearean language, therefore I have brought individuality to the traditional form. But I disagree that you need to look at tradition when trying to create something in your chosen form, at least not as profusely as what Eliot thought you did. If I were to explain to someone what a sonnet was, who had never heard of one before, and asked them to write one, they probably could, and if they continued to persist at it I bet they'd end up writing very good ones. Form can be invented, and probably allows for greater creativity. Even in terms of genre, the early fantasy writers such as Tolkien were revolutionary in there creation of something new. And yes they were inspired by earlier mythology,  but they were in no way recreating it in their own work.  

So, essentially… I’m not sure what my initial question was? Well essentially I think form is weird, I think it’s both quantifiable and not quantifiable. Both Specific and easy to manipulate. And that choose in form is involuntary, everyone is influenced by everyone else, and they can’t help falling in love with a form after they come to it. I could never imagine writing a longer piece I’m working on as a short story, or a poem as a song, or a play as a script for a movie. Maybe form chooses us. Maybe that’s just me. Maybe others think: okay, I’m going to write a poem, but what should it be about? I hope reading this wasn’t to much of a waste of your time, as I have no straightforward conclusion.