Definitions of Form

Robert Hass, in the book for this course, A Little Book on Form, provides these definitions of form:

• One meaning of form that has currency has the meaning “traditional form,” which usually means the use of rhyme and meter.
• Another meaning is that it refers to one of a number of traditional kinds poems that apply particular rules of composition. As in “the sonnet is a form.”
• Another meaning is “external shape.”
• Another is “the arrangement and relationship of basic elements in a work of art, through which it produces a coherent whole.”
• The way the poem embodies the energy of the gesture of its making.

In addition, we are curious about the work that form does; how it can make unique acts of attention occur? So, framing our explorations is Caroline Levine’s recent book, Forms. Levine draws together historically disconnected ideas about what forms do, and employing design concepts, she reframes the idea of form through what it “affords” our thinking. In other words, we consider the question, what is a form capable of doing?

Hass, Robert. A Little Book on Form. Ecco, 2017, pp. 3–4.