New Formalism is a movement in American poetry that began in the late 20th century and continued into the early 21st century. It encourages poets to use rhythm, rhyme, and storytelling in their work. This approach is believed to help American poetry compete with novels and become popular again with Americans.

Background

The new styles of Modernist poetry, influenced by Walt Whitman and promoted by poets like Ezra Pound, Edgar Lee Masters, and T.S. Eliot, led to the widespread use of free verse in the early 1900s. By the 1920s, American literary journals often included discussions about whether free verse or traditional poetry was more valuable.

At the same time, many poets continued to write in traditional forms, such as Robert Frost, Richard Wilbur, and Anthony Hecht. Formal poetry was also written by poets linked to the New Criticism movement, including John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, and Allen Tate.

In the 1950s, a second wave of free verse, called the "Free Verse Revolution," was inspired by Beat Generation poets like Allen Ginsberg and Kenneth Rexroth, as well as Imagist poet William Carlos Williams. This movement, according to Frederick Feirstein and Frederick Turner, reflected the Silent Generation’s broader rejection of Puritan traditions in American society. This was shown through the Greaser subculture and the rise of Rock and Roll music by artists like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bill Haley, and Elvis Presley.

As a result, poets became more likely to try new techniques. With the rise of Confessional poetry, writing and sharing personal, non-rhythmic poems with liberal political themes became popular. However, over time, what had started as a movement against traditional rules became a group that resisted change and criticized both older and younger poets who did not follow its standards.

Feirstein and Turner wrote:

"It is hard to imagine in 1989 how limited and strict the world of poetry was in the 1970s when poets in the movement grew older. Both storytelling and rhythm were seen as outdated or tools of capitalist society. These poets ignored the rhythm and storytelling in blues and country music, claiming that rhythm and storytelling were elitist European traditions and that true American voices could only be heard in free verse. These views included a belief that poets should reject their cultural past and society. Though they often taught in universities, these poets showed hostility toward science, technology, and a preference for nature over culture. They often expressed pessimism about the future, which supported their personal stories about the past."

In an essay, R.S. Gwynn wrote about American poetry in the 1970s:

"The tribal music of Poetryland—confusing manifestos about Projective Verse and breath-units, copies of poems like Howl and Daddy, and the use of Deep Image and complex ideas—began to feel like repeated rituals, spoken by many but understood by few. A sense grew that certain types of poetry had become too common and were no longer useful."

An early sign of renewed interest in traditional poetry was the 1968 publication of Lewis Turco’s The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics. In the early 1970s, X. J. Kennedy started a short-lived magazine called Counter/Measures, which focused on traditional poetic forms. A few other editors supported formal poetry, but the mainstream still opposed rhyme and rhythm.

At the same time, young Formalist poets from the Silent and Baby Boomer generations could still take classes taught by older professors like Yvor Winters, Robert Fitzgerald, and Elizabeth Bishop, who taught traditional methods of writing and literary criticism.

In a 2021 interview, Dana Gioia said that while New Formalism and New Narrative are the most controversial responses to the Second Free Verse Revolution, they are part of a larger movement. Gioia explained:

"In 1975, when I left Harvard, experts told me that rhyme and rhythm were gone, storytelling was gone, and poetry would become more complex, appealing only to an elite audience. They also said that African American voices in poetry rejected European traditions and embraced experimental styles. What U.S. intellectuals did was take poetry away from everyday people. They removed rhyme, storytelling, and ballads, and the common people reinvented them. The greatest example was Kool Herc in the South Bronx, who created what we now call rap and hip hop. Within ten years, it went from nonexistent to the most popular music form. We saw something similar to Homer’s work, where people reinvented oral poetry. This was also seen in the revival of slam poetry, cowboy poetry, and new formalism. At every social group, people created new forms of poetry because intellectuals had taken it away from them."

According to William Baer, the start of New Formalism can be seen in Rachel Hadas’ first chapbook published in 1975, Charles Martin’s first collection in 1978, and Timothy Steele’s first book of poems in 1979.

Frederick Feirstein and Frederick Turner first learned about New Formalism during a 1981 conversation with Dick Allen at the "Minetta Tavern" in Greenwich Village. Turner had just published a provocative essay titled "Mighty Poets in Their Misery Dead: A Polemic on the Contemporary Poetry Scene" in Missouri Review and quickly received responses from other Formalist poets. Meanwhile, Feirstein was already in contact with West Coast Formalist poets like Charles Martin and Dana Gioia. Turner and Feirstein later said, "We began to see ourselves as a distinct movement of many people. We saw each other’s work appear regularly in literary journals."

Other scholars, including Robert McPhillips and Gerry Cambridge, trace the start of New Formalism to the 1986 essay "The New Conservatism in American Poetry" by Diane Wakoski and the strong reactions it caused from poets like Robert Mezey, Lewis Turco, David Radavich, Brian Richards, and Dana Gioia.

Early history

The first signs of the conflict that led to the creation of the New Formalism movement appeared in 1977 with the publication of a Mississippi Review issue titled Freedom and Form: American Poets Respond. During the late 1970s, several poets published collections using traditional poetic forms. These included Comforting the Wilderness (1977) by Robert B. Shaw, Room for Error (1978) by Charles Martin, and Uncertainties and Rest (1979) by Timothy Steele. In 1980, Mark Jarman and Robert McDowell started a small magazine called The Reaper to support narrative and formal poetry. In 1981, Jane Greer launched Plains Poetry Journal, which featured new poems written in traditional forms. In 1984, McDowell founded Story Line Press, which later published works by New Formalist poets. The Reaper continued for ten years. In 1989, Frederick Feirstein’s Expansive Poetry collected essays about New Formalism and the related movement called New Narrative, grouping them under the term Expansive Poetry.

From 1983, the start of "neoformalism" was noticed in yearly poetry summaries in The Dictionary of Literary Biography yearbooks. Between the mid-1980s, discussions about formalism in poetry were debated in several journals. In 1986, Vikram Seth’s novel The Golden Gate: A Novel in Verse and the anthology Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms were published.

The Poetry Wars

As the leaders of the movement gained support from more young formalist poets, the debate that had started in the 1920s and 1950s began again and was later called the Poetry Wars by literary experts. This time, Free Verse poets, many of whom were English professors and part of the 1960s Counterculture, found themselves in an unexpected situation as representatives of The Establishment.

The term "New Formalism" was first used by Ariel Dawson in an article titled "The Yuppie Poet" published in the May 1985 issue of the AWP Newsletter. The article criticized the return to traditional poetic forms. Dawson accused New Formalist poets of being socially conservative and of supporting ideas linked to wealth, consumerism, and greed. These claims were repeated often in the future.

At the same time, Frederick Turner and Ernst Pöppel, a psychologist and neuroscientist from the Max Planck Institute in Munich, West Germany, discovered that regular rhythm causes the brain to release endorphins that create pleasure. In 1985, they shared their findings in the award-winning essay The Neural Lyre: Poetic Meter, the Brain, and Time, published in the magazine Poetry.

In 1986, Diane Wakoski, a deep image poet, literary critic, and professor at Michigan State University, wrote an essay titled The New Conservatism in American Poetry. This essay was inspired by Wakoski’s experience at a Modern Language Association conference, where John Hollander, an old Formalist, criticized college and university creative writing programs and the lack of quality in free verse poetry, according to Robert McPhillips.

Wakoski described Hollander’s remarks as "the Devil speaking to me." She claimed Hollander was angry and resentful, criticizing the free verse movement and mocking writers who taught poetry without proper training. Wakoski also accused younger poets of supporting "the new conservatism," which she said continued the traditions of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, T.S. Eliot, and Robert Frost.

According to Gerry Cambridge, Wakoski’s essay led to five responses from Robert Mezey, Lewis Turco, David Radavich, Brian Richards, and Dana Gioia. Most of these responses argued that there was no necessary connection between poetic form and political views, using Ezra Pound as an example of a Fascist who wrote free verse. They also criticized Wakoski’s opposition to literary diversity, calling it a form of cultural fascism. Gioia compared her ideas to those of Joseph Goebbels, a leader of Nazi Germany, and suggested that any poetry written by Americans should be considered American poetry. Wakoski’s essay and these responses marked the first public debate about the young movement.

Although later arguments by Progressive New Formalist poets, such as Paul Lake in 1988 and A.E. Stallings in 2010, challenged political stereotypes, Dana Gioia noted in 1987 that the debate between formal and free verse poetry had become a political discussion for many writers.

Because of this, the Poetry Wars continued. Poets who wrote free verse and Confessional poetry were often described as social progressives, anti-racists, and New Left socialists. New Formalist and New Narrative poets, however, were seen as wealthy, white, and nostalgic for the British Empire. Traditional verse poetry was criticized by supporters of the "Free Verse Revolution" as outdated, Eurocentric, un-American, and even fascist.

For female New Formalists, the Poetry Wars brought accusations of betraying feminism. Annie Finch wrote in 1994 in the introduction to A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form by Contemporary Women that formal poetry does not necessarily mean conservative politics or elitist views. She noted that many diverse poets share a love for poetic form.

Similar criticism was directed at minority New Formalists. In her own essay, Dominican-American poet and novelist Julia Alvarez defended her choice to use languages and verse forms brought to the Americas by English and Spanish colonists. She explained that she used these forms to express her identity as a woman and a Latina.

Later history

In 1990, William Baer founded The Formalist, a magazine that published poetry. The first issue included poems by Howard Nemerov, Richard Wilbur, and Donald Justice, among others. The magazine was published twice a year for fifteen years, with its final issue appearing in the fall/winter of 2004. The Formalist was followed by Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry, which is published twice a year by the University of Evansville.

Since 1995, West Chester University has hosted an annual poetry conference focused on formal poetry and New Formalism. Richard Wilbur, who initially hesitated to participate, became the keynote speaker at the first conference in 1995. His involvement helped make the event successful and led to its continued annual occurrence. Wilbur also attended the conference and taught classes on poetry techniques until his late nineties. Each year, the West Chester Poetry Conference awards the Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award.

Rhina Espaillat, a Dominican-American poet, attended the first West Chester Poetry Conference as a student. Later, as a teacher at the conference, she introduced her students to verse forms from Spanish and Latin American poetry, such as the décima and ovillejo. These forms have since been used by Espaillat’s students in English-language poetry.

Dick Davis, an expert in Persian culture and a scholar trained in Iranian studies, and Agha Shahid Ali, a Kashmiri Muslim poet who wrote ghazals in American English, are also considered New Formalists.

Within New Formalism, several living authors write Christian poetry. These include Dana Gioia, Frederick Turner, David Middleton, and James Matthew Wilson.

Modern Christian poetry can be found in books called anthologies and in publications such as Commonweal, Christian Century, and Sojourners. Poetry by a new generation of Catholic poets appears in St. Austin Review, Dappled Things, The Lamp, and First Things.

Legacy

During the early 21st century, poems written in traditional styles were published more often, and the new formalist movement was slowing down.

In 2001, the American poet Leo Yankevich started a publication called The New Formalist, which featured poets such as Jared Carter and Keith Holyoak.

At the same time, some people still criticized the movement. In the November/December 2003 issue of P. N. Review, N. S. Thompson wrote: "Movements need some excitement to attract attention, but they must also show artistic success. Looking back, the movement seems more like a marketing effort than a true poetic revolution."

Since then, the influence of new formalism has appeared in general poetry. A study of poetry collections over time showed more villanelles included in editions published after the mid-1980s. Books about poetic form also became more common. For example, Lewis Turco’s Book of Forms (1968) was revised and republished in 1986 as New Book of Forms. Other works, such as Alfred Corn’s The Poem’s Heartbeat, Mary Oliver’s Rules of the Dance, and Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled, reflect this trend. The anthology An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art (2002), edited by Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes, describes formalist poetry as equally important as experimental, free verse, or prose poetry.

In a 2010 essay, poet A.E. Stallings, whose work is often compared to Richard Wilbur and Edna St. Vincent Millay, noted that writing formal verse in American poetry remained "an oddly politicized choice." She also mentioned that female and minority New Formalists continued to face criticism, as part of a false idea that free verse represents democracy and progress, while formal verse represents oppression and elitism.

Later in the same essay, Stallings described listening to African-American poet Erica Dawson, who is respected in the formal poetry community. Dawson shared that a decade earlier, she was told at a recitation contest that "form was dead," but now she has judged the same contest. She showed confidence and a sense of accomplishment, using traditional forms in her own way.

In a 2022 interview with St. Austin Review co-editor Joseph Pearce, Polish journalist Anna Szyda from the literary magazine Magna Polonia explained that the nihilism in modern American poetry is widely noticed in Poland as a sign of "the harmful influence of modern civilization on the American soul." Pearce responded by describing the "neo-formalist revival" inspired by Richard Wilbur and how it appears in recent poetry by Catholic poets published in St. Austin Review. He noted that the faith and optimism of younger Catholic poets give him hope for the future.

In a 2016 interview with John Cusatis, Dana Gioia explained, "Literary movements are temporary. They last about a decade and then fade or become part of the mainstream. The best New Formalist poets eventually became mainstream figures. There was no clear end to the Poetry Wars, only gradual change. Free and formal verse are no longer seen as opposites. Form is now one of many styles used in modern poetry. Today, poems with rhyme and meter appear in most literary magazines. New Formalism became so successful that it no longer needed to exist as a separate movement."

New Formalist canon

In 2004, the West Chester Conference held a special meeting called a "Defining the Canon of New Formalism" seminar. Only invited people could attend. The seminar focused on discussing the following collections of poems and stories: