People tend to assume I have a problem with authority. (Maybe it’s the pink hair. Or the facial piercing. Or the tattoos. Or my “I Eat Babies” t-shirt.) In truth, I’m secretly a bit of a fan of rules. As I once told my old manager, “I don’t have a problem with authority unless it’s telling me to do something stupid.”

Which brings me to poetry. Free verse, you say? Folderol and balderdash, say I! Any depressed junior high school student can write free verse. Give me something with form! Let’s bring on villanelles, sestinas and sonnets. Even better are sonnet sequences, the concept albums of poetry. My favorite is “Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons,” by Marilyn Hacker. Here’s a sample (warning, lesbian poetry ahead):

I broke a glass, got bloodstains on the sheet:
hereafter, must I only write you chaste
connubial poems? Now that I have traced
a way from there to here across the sweet-
est morning, rose-blushed blonde, will measured feet
advance processionally, where before
they scuff-heeled flights of stairs, kicked at a door,
or danced in wing-tips to a dirty beat?
Or do I tell the world that I have got
rich quick, got lucky (got laid), got just what
the doctor ordered, more than I deserved?
This is the second morning I woke curved
around your dreaming. In one night, I’ve seen
moonset and sunrise in your lion’s mane.

And that’s not even one of the dirty ones.

From a writer’s standpoint, writing structured poetry is a great exercise. Something like a canzone or a sestina, where you have end-words instead of rhymes, are a great way to figure out how to really get your money’s worth out of a word. (Check out Canzone, also by Hacker.) Traditional forms of poetry can make you look at language in a whole new way. I consider myself an essayist, not a poet, but for me a villanelle is a little like a crossword puzzle. It’s not going to be art when I’m done with it, but if nothing else, it’s entertainment.

And of course, in the hands of actual poets, modern poetry in traditional forms can blow my mind. I like to introduce people to “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop by saying, “Read this villanelle. It will change your life:”

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something everyday. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these things will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

-Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.