Free Form Poetry's .... Form

In the Drucker and McGann article, a take-home point of theirs' was that "The presentational form of texts and images usually masques their logical operations in a surface rhetoric that dominates and controls our conscious attention." I take this to mean that when we read a text- say a book, article, etc., the way our writing-conscious brains work is that we try our best to absorb the content or message the author is getting at. In this process we almost completely ignore the form, composition, arrangement, and graphical nature of the text. I don't believe this to be entirely true, at least in the all-inclusive sense. Yes, generally, when reading a book or paper or article we will absorb the information and throw the concept of form away. However, we use several elements that are included in the graphical nature, or the logical arrangement of text to enhance some elements. Some minor examples- manicules, engorged first letters, color, certain typefaces, the ability to turn on "invisibles" in Office Word programs, and skewed lettering. All of these are examples of the "logical operations in a surface rhetoric" that actually aren't masked by their presentational form, and we very much use it to enhance their noticeability, even.

My primary example and the subject of this entry is free form poetry. The very title itself refutes the idea that we abandon form in texts. Free Form Poetry is the antithesis to that notion. The form of free-form poetry, while not always contrary to the normal form of written language, definitely differs from the ordinary line-after-line of normal text we see. Its presentational form opens up the way we see it, and not only doesn't mask its logical operation but enhances it. For example, the use of space in free form poetry could (not always) completely change the way we read something and give it new meaning- part of its logical operation. Normally, we just take the idea of space for granted as that little invisible (not always so if you have an Office Word Program!) divider between words that does nothing but prevent our beautiful text from being an alphabetic jumble. When you incorporate





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spaces between your words it emphasizes them and thus draws attention to the form of the text.