01-28-2026, 11:14 PM
Once tried to write a poem using this analogy and it failed miserably, but just a thought...
Writing poetry is like pedaling a bicycle uphill: it the slope (subject) is easy or firmly in mind, you can use high gear (complex/difficult forms) and get over the top successfully. If it's difficult - politics, science, history - easier gears (forms) will get you there. So, sonnets for romance but free verse for politics, tetrameter for stories, blank verse for really rolling out an idea. And a really difficult form (to do right) for a short, sharp hill (haiku) that in its senryu guise is suitable for the easiest ideas (human foibles). Another metric for how "easy" a subject is would be how likely it is to resonate with the general reader... hence romance, but also death and certain forms of nonsense.
And changing gears - forms - partway through a climb is much like an admission of defeat... or at least weakness. Or if up-shifting, great confidence developing in one's mastery of the idea.
Writing poetry is like pedaling a bicycle uphill: it the slope (subject) is easy or firmly in mind, you can use high gear (complex/difficult forms) and get over the top successfully. If it's difficult - politics, science, history - easier gears (forms) will get you there. So, sonnets for romance but free verse for politics, tetrameter for stories, blank verse for really rolling out an idea. And a really difficult form (to do right) for a short, sharp hill (haiku) that in its senryu guise is suitable for the easiest ideas (human foibles). Another metric for how "easy" a subject is would be how likely it is to resonate with the general reader... hence romance, but also death and certain forms of nonsense.
And changing gears - forms - partway through a climb is much like an admission of defeat... or at least weakness. Or if up-shifting, great confidence developing in one's mastery of the idea.
Non-practicing atheist