To be clear: I’m not the one who severed structure and form. While there is significant overlap in the use of these terms, they often have been used to signify different things. For instance, lots of intro to poetry textbooks discuss form and structure as separate (or somehow separable) entities. So far, however, form has gotten WAY more attention and play than structure. I think there is at least one clear reason for this: we have names for forms–that is, we have a clear taxonomy for form, and so form seems in some ways more approachable (and teachable) than structure. (I think this is one major reason why, Bob, as you say, you’ve never thought about structure outside of formal structure…)

In part, my focusing on structure (and focusing on structure as the pattern of a poem’s turning) is a pragmatic endeavor, one which allows us to start to see that there are taxonomic possibilities in structure as well as form. This, then, is one way to turn more critical and pedagogical attention toward the turn, that vital but radically under-discussed element of poems. It seems to me that if we don’t do this (or something like this), we simply lose structure–that is, structure goes back to being something people SAY is really important in poems but that no one has any idea about how to speak systematically about. (This is what often takes place in intro to poetry textbooks–structure is paid lip service, but then quickly is passed over…)

About what happens before and after turns, I’d simply say that I think a poem can in fact have many turns in it, and it can have major and minor turns. What goes on before and after (major) turns may be structural (minor turns), but it also could be many other things, including matters of diction, syntax, imagery, etc.

I understand the need for a more global term for all those organizational elements in poems not covered by form and structure, and perhaps your terms are the ones to use, Bob–I’ll have to think more on this. (NB: In many ways, I like “rhetorical structure”–and indeed I think the art of rhetoric very much is behind what I’m trying to do with S&S and this blog…however, I tried to not use the term “rhetoric”…I didn’t want to scare anyone away! As I said, I will think on this more…) However, I wonder: wouldn’t it, alternatively, be just as easy to call all those other organizational elements “organization” and let structure–a term which in almost all of its uses includes turning as one of its central components–be both the signifier of the pattern of a poem’s turning AND a way to underscore the importance of that turning, turning which for so long has been so little systematized and (therefore?) so little discussed?

Again, Bob, thank you for your thoughtful input.

Best,

Mike

I've been working in this area a long time, going at it from quite a different perspective. It seems to me you are much more interested in the content of a poem than I, I in the mechanics, or poetic devices used. But there's a lot of overlap. Anyway, I'm tentatively dividing poems into what I'm calling "decks," choosing a name I don't think should be confusing the way I feel "structure" is. Thus, I have a formal deck and, now, a rhetorical deck. (Yeah, it's a nuisance how words get damaged by emotional over-reaction or whatever it is that stabbed "rhetoric.") What you're doing has given me a lot of help in suggesting where to take my decks. Thanks for that, and thanks for even getting as involved as you have in something it seems to me very few poetry people care much about--but should!

all best, Bob