A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form by Contemporary Women, recently
published by Story Line Press, 3 Oaks Farm, Brownsville, Oregon, phone
503-466-5352, defines formal poetry as poetry structured by the
conspicuous repetition of some language element. The book includes
blues, chants, nonce forms, pun poems, pantoums, sonnets and sapphics,
indexed according to form and identified by form in an appendix. Each
poet prefaces her selection with a discussion of poetics written
especially for this anthology. Poets are gathered from a wide range of
aesthetic and political persuasions and include Alvarez, Budenz, Dove,
Hacker, Kizer, Kumin, Lewis, Sanchez, Simon, Villanueva, Waldman and
50 others.