Leave It to the French

It's not worth it. Really.

I've tried, and I can just tell you: it's not worth it.

What is "it?" (*sings* "It's in your face and you can't grab it!") "It" is writing English poesy in French forms.

You'd think that would be obvious, but so many try it, even well-known published poets. Why? Because English verse forms are boring, that's why.

Let's face facts: traditional English verse is basically iambic pentameter in couplets or quatrains. Ecch. But it's what works. ("Rhyme royale" is the two rhyme-forms stuck together, basically.)

You don't need me to prove it: look at Shakespeare's sonnets or his narrative verse. He just didn't do triolets or ballades (AFAIK, anyway). But he knew what did work within the confines of our common tongue.

There are exceptions to what I'm saying: Shakespeare wrote song lyrics for some of his lighter plays that are outside the standard "box" of English poesy. And modern greats like Dylan Thomas and T.S. Eliot adapted French forms for some of their finest work.

But if you look at the lyric poems of a writer like Swinburne, his own French-form material is very slick and expert -- yet kind of empty.

What I'm saying is that the free-verse poet trying out traditional verse for the first go can save a lot of time and trouble by avoiding French-form English verse.

Postscript, friends: That doesn't mean you can't benefit from reading it: I think Swinburne's translations of Villon are a great source. So are, in that and many other respects, Galway Kinnell's, for a modern take.