A Small Boat Across the Mediterranean

Roger Berkowitz
I came across this interview by Jeevika Verma with Marilyn Hacker, one of my favorite poets who for some reason I haven’t read in a long while. Verma asks Hacker about her use of form, how “discipline and intimacy work together in a way that might feel contradictory at first but provides a clear path toward open communication.” And then she and Hacker talk about the power of form to convey volatile movements and emotions. Here is their exchange. 

JV
What about the relationship between movement and form? In Calligraphies you’re able to portray the tension that comes with movement. I’m thinking of these lines from the poem “Calligraphies XI”—“I’m not home, I’m / not homesick, not sure of my / footing and language.” How do you play with free, unsettled, or volatile movement within the framework of the form you are working with?
MH
It seems to me that metrical lines or syllabics are often the most interesting way to deal with unsettled or volatile movement—physical, emotional, or intellectual—in a poem, because of the tension then created between content and form. Meter, even syllabics, are, I think, perceived by a reader as much physically—as music is initially perceived—as intellectually. It’s rarely first, “oh, that’s a sonnet” before actually becoming aware of the meter, or of repetitions, acting in tandem or in utter counterpoint to the subject matter, narrative or emotional undercurrent. Maybe in a way, the form is like the small boat that's taking us across the Mediterranean.