Definitions of Form
Sep 10, 2021
- 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.
Haas, Robert. A Little Book on Form: An Exploration into the Formal Imagination of Poetry. New York: Ecco, 2017, pp. 3–8.