How we choose to write.

[milo]

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.

This is certainly something to chew on. My initial response is But doesn't it give the reader a jolt awake when the subject appears in inappropriate dress?

But I think your response deserves attention, I'm going to try to absorb it and see if it helps. Thanks for trying to describe it in a way that might sink in.

I think sometimes we get stuck with the idea that a poem was written this way so now it exists this way.  A friend (the inimitable Julie Carter) could take any poem and rewrite it in several different forms - hers, yours, famous people.

You could write something and say "hey Julie, what would this look like as a sonnet" and she would show you.  I think it's a good practice to do that on occasion.