Special Session

Poetry and Form / Creative Writing, Editing, and Publishing

Akim Golubev (University of Nevada - Las Vegas)
kim.@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

The Formalist Poetry panel offers presenters the opportunity to share ideas that range from the minuscule aspects of prosody to theodicy problems addressed by the poets of the past and present. Poets and scholars may submit critical essays and creative work that investigate and analyze different aspects of the poetic form, including prosodic theories, literary theories, meter and rhyme, sound, tropes, and schemes. This panel will investigate connections between the tangible and immaterial nature of poetic form: its limiting and liberating principles.

In the Formalist Poetry panel, we will investigate the following questions surrounding poetry and form: Is there such a thing as 'free-verse'? How do meter and rhythm evolve? What is the purpose of the preservation of forms in poetry? Are there any specific aspects associated with prosodic elements that reshape poetic rhetoric? Is it possible to avoid form? What do canonical and non-canonical poets think/say/illustrate about form? and so on. This panel welcomes essays that address different periods and theories, including the Early Modern, the Long Eighteenth Century, Romantic, Modern, Postmodern, Posthuman, and others. A poem, a story, and even an academic essay hold more information than its historical context may suggest because there are connections between texts and there are various ways in which texts reference each other. Prosodic analysis ought to seek the means through which a critical reader may find more reasons to appreciate the value of a poem. The conflict poets present in their works is always multi-dimensional. Rhyme, meter, sound, form, and other prosodic elements are the mechanisms that create these dimensions by bringing attention to the concept of poetic wholeness, which consists of interconnected ties, elements, and dependencies. The poly-semantic nature of a poetic text postulates a reasonable question of whether full control of the text belongs to its author, whether its reader has the power to influence the meaning of the text, or whether the text’s meaning demonstrates the unity of integrated literary works on its own. Answers to this and similar questions are the core of this panel, and the potential fundings come in many forms. The Formalist Poetry panel looks for papers that examine the poetic form because it allows a reader to elucidate the individual pieces of poetic work by inspecting anything that needs to be seen, re-seen, reformed, and re-defined for the sake of the art of literature. Please, submit your work to Akim Golubev, akim.golubev@unlv.edu by May 31, 2023.