Professor Matz dicussed on Wednesday’s recitation that form is how something is communicated, which depends on two things: one’s enjoyment of literature and one’s understanding of literature. Reading literature and enjoying it, he said, is responding to its form. I think this ties in well with his example of the TV series Survivor. Our enjoyment of watching the show would depend on both the form and content of the show. Its form may include the cinematography, editing, camera angles, etc. Likewise, our enjoyment of a poem is also a response to its form.
In class on Tuesday I was chatting with some peers who all agreed that “poetry sucks,†or more specifically sonnets. Having learned about the significance of form, we can see how form impacts and often dictates how we feel about a poem. Like professor Matz said on Wednesday night, when we think of a sonnet we think about the themes and its content which are often love and romance.
In E.E. Cummings’ poem [Buffalo Bill ‘s], there is no particular rhyme scheme or set pattern in which the words are laid out on the page, but the form is visually more playful and quickly-read than a sonnet. Its form ties in with its theme of youth. Space and indentation in this particular poem are important markers of a change in mood or an indicator of speed. Professor Matz discussed two literary concepts in form: close reading and genre. Both of these shape the content and the reader’s response to the literature. He defined genre as a grouping of literary works or productions that share a particular form, but also that the general rules of form for that genre may be broken or altered. E.E. Cummings’ poem is one example of a poem breaking the conventional “rules†of poetry and challenge the reader to look beyond its content and pay close attention to its visual markers.