The year 2008 marked the fortieth anniversary of the publication of the volume on which the movement called "The New Formalism" (originally "Neoformalism") has been based: The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics which appeared in 1968 as an E. P. Dutton paperback.
In 1973 the first college textbook to offer a formalist system for teaching verse technique, Poetry: An Introduction through Writing, was written by Lewis Turco and published by the Reston Publishing Company. The poet Felix Stefanile wrote (in Lewis Turco and His Work: A Celebration, edited by Dr. Steven E. Swerdfeger in 2004), "Lewis Turco has earned his reputation not only as a poet, but as a scholar and a biographer. His books on poetry, its forms, and its prosody, are used in the schools.... His Poetry: An Introduction through Writing was one of the more original poetry texts on the market...." In 2008 this book, long out-of-print, was made available on-line in ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U. S. Department of Education, and its author received the Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award given by the New Formalist West Chester University Poetry Conference and presented by Dana Gioia, co-Director of the Conference and Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts:
The first hardbound and second paperback edition of The Book of Forms, containing all the material originally appearing in the first edition and in Poetry: An Introduction through Writing, was titled The New Book of Forms. Published iin 1986 by the University Press of New England, it marked the beginning of the second generation of writers to use what was becoming known to Neoformalists as “The Poet’s Bible.” “It opens with chapters on the typographical, sonic, sensory and ideational levels of language,” R. T. Smith wrote on-line, “and this Turco follows up with an encyclopedia of forms, complete with examples so masterful as to encourage any reader to believe that great things can be accomplished by working in forms that have a history and a sense of ceremony about them.”*
“Belongs in the hands of every poet, student, and teacher, for the greater good of the art.”
James Dickey, 1986
The Book
of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Third edition, www.UPNE.com, 2000. ISBN 1584650222, trade
paperback, $24.95, 337 pages. “The Poet’s Bible," A companion volume to The
Book of Dialogue and The
Book of Literary Terms.
ORDER FROM AMAZON
The Book of Dialogue, How to Write Effective Conversation in Fiction, Screenplays, Drama, and Poetry, www.UPNE.com, 2004. ISBN 1584653612, quality paperback, $14.95, 190 pages. A companion volume to The Book of Forms and The Book of Literary Terms. Order from AMAZON
The third edition of The Book of Forms, which was published in both cloth and paperback editions by New England in 2000, appeared on the New York City Schools’ list of “Recommended Books for Teachers.” A companion volume, The Book of Literary Terms, The Genres of Fiction, Drama, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, and Scholarship, organized on the model of The Book of Forms, was published in cloth and paperback editions by New England in 1999 and received a Choice citation as an “Outstanding Academic Title” for the year 2000. A third volume in this series, The Book of Dialogue: How to Write Effective Conversation in Fiction, Screenplays, Drama, and Poetry, appeared in a paperback edition by New England in February 2004 and was chosen in 2005 by the Association of American University Presses as a “University Press Book Selected for Public and Secondary School Libraries.” It is a revised and expanded edition of Dialogue, originally published in hardcover by Writer’s Digest Books in 1989; in paperback in 1991; in a U. K. paperback edition by Robinson Publishing in 1989; in an Italian translation, Il Dialogo, by Casa Editrice Nord of Milan in 1992, and as part of a 1995 Robinson book titled How to Write a Mi££ion. Taken as a set, this series of three books covers the spectrum of writing in all genres.
*"Of course," Smith continued, "it’s easy to see this as sculpting the language from the outside, but once one has practiced sestinas, sonnets, ballades or even obscure and demanding forms like the deibhidhe stanza, they can become part of the poet’s natural way of thinking, part of the crystallization process. Although this is more a reference book than a reader-friendly jaunt through the history of poetic form, the examples by 'Wesli Court' [Lewis Turco] and Turco’s own arrangements of the texts of Emily Dickinson’s letters supply the book with enough wit to tempt the reader back again and again.”
R. T. Smith
The Book of Forms can bring to each
the poetry he yearns to learn.
Aspiring poets will return
to search the knowledge within reach,
improving their poetic speech.
It teaches meter with concern,
The Book of Forms.
Examples shown, we don't impeach;
they're chosen carefully, in turn
parameters no longer burn,
bring freedom in constraint - a peach,
The Book of Forms.
Leny Roovers
Mike Snider’s Formal Blog at the Sonnetarium Thursday, December 23, 2004: "From Chaucer to Turco."
At the New Poetry list, Sam Gwynn pointed the rest of us to this article on Chaucer as the father of free verse and to this interview with Lewis Turco by Daniel Nester. The first appears to be a sadly typical piece of School of Phlogiston academic sensationalism, extrapolating from Chaucer's not always rigorous adherence to the foreign forms he was adapting to a claim that Chaucer anticipated free verse. The finished work may, of course, be better and more coherent than the blurbish article, but as Timothy Steele sometimes remarks, Chaucer is the only New Formalist.
Nester's interview of Turco, though, is very interesting. Most people who know only The Book of Forms will be surprised at his practicality as a writer and poet — he treats it as a job, and one he does damned well. We could use more of his kind of professionalism in poetry.
Mike Snider
I met you, [Lewis Turco], at a poetry reading several years ago at the Gulf of Maine bookstore. At the time I was the poetry editor at MiPoesias and you read at our event.
Your The Book of Forms has provided much inspiration for me. As a matter of fact, at my reading at the North Star Cafe in Portland on Tuesday [January 15, 2008] I'll be reading several poems in forms I'd never have heard of if not for your book. Thank you very much for your time and for providing such an entertaining reference.
PJ Nights
Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems
1959-2007 Lewis Turco ’59 (CLAS)
(www.StarCloudPress.com)
Lewis Turco is a poet’s poet. A respected teacher for nearly four decades at Cleveland State University and the State University of New York at Oswego, he wrote The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, which is known as the poet’s Bible. His writing has been honored with the nation’s most respected poetry awards. Fearful Pleasures brings together Turco’s life’s work of rich imagery, captured moments, melancholy thoughts, ghosts, cats, the rooms of a house and much more. In one of his more daring works, Turco takes phrases and entire lines from letters written by Emily Dickinson and weaves them together into poems. Through more than 600 pages, he still is offering lessons on poetry.
The UConn Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 2, Summer 2007.
I was looking for extra copies of your wonderful The Book of Forms online for my students (it's been my personal poetry Bible for more than 35 years!) and discovered your web site…. In any case, warm regards to you, and thank you for decades of joy, garnered as I tried my hand at working in the various forms in my beloved, dog-eared copy of The Book of Forms!
Leigh Harrison
I think I told you that a colleague of mine who used your
book of forms when it first came out, gave me a copy. I used his syllabus and
wrote. Since that time I've used The Book of Forms, The New Book of Forms and then The Book of Forms (third ed.), both for my own work and for ALL of my
creative writing and poetry writing classes.
Miriam N. Kotzin
It goes without saying that I am a fan. It is impossible
to imagine a form poet who is not. My copy of the third edition of The Book
of Forms is dogeared. It goes wherever my
computer goes.
Brian Bridges