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Style is a poem's living force, and it makes its home inside a poem's form. When we think of form—at least when I think of form—we think of the poem in toro, its structural material, its observable exterior, universal qualities (rhythm, lineation, stanza pattern, length). We expect the poet's attention to the scheme, quality of arrangement, and artistic design of lines and stanzas, at the very least, to be greater than our own as readers. We want to feel that a poem's form is contingent and inevitable rather than predictable. On the other hand, style is a poem's inner assemblage, its local diction, tone, perspective, and emphasis. How is
Mary Jo Bang, The Downstream Extremity of the Isle of Swans. University of Georgia Press, 2001. 64 pages. $15.95 pb; Michael Collier, The Ledge. Houghton Mifflin, 2000. 60 pages. $22; Stanley Plumly, Now That My Father Lies Down beside Me: New and Selected Poems, 1970–2000. Ecco Press/HarperCollins, 2000. 160 pages. $23, $13.95 pb.
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the voice particular to the moment? How does the imprint of the mind of the poet reveal itself through that voice and through that moment, and in what particular sort of language? What makes poet A sound different from poet B? Style is the point from which a poet stakes a corner of perception, like setting your flag on the moon. Form is the view. Style is the vision.
And so to locate what individuates a poet, a reader must confront that poet's style. This is especially true for free-verse poets, because free verse elevates the importance of individual style and distinctiveness over the poet's more bardic capacity to negotiate received forms. Three recent books exemplify how style has been evolving in American poetry during the last thirty years. Coleridge is still instructive in this regard. He felt, first of all, that a poet's “predominant passion” defined one's style. And he believed that the style was made especially visible through the traditional realm of received form.
Two hundred years later we still largely expect the same thing out of a poet's style, especially and ironically a free-verse poet's style—the recognizable “predominant passion” made visible through the realm of organic form. I think what Coleridge means here is that, for...