Sherry Chandler

Form is (still) content

The arts which control the material and possess the necessary knowledge are two: the art which uses the product and the art of the master-craftsman who directs the manufacture. Hence the art of the user also may in a sense be called the master-art; the difference is that this art is concerned with knowing the form, the other, which is supreme as controlling the manufacture, with knowing the material.
—Artistotle, Physics

The word “form” sometimes suggests merely “the way the thing is said”—simply ornamenting some distinct “content” which, by contrast, carries meaning on its own honest face. But this dichotomy fails when meaning adheres instead to some interface between “form” and “content.” …What matters instead is a particular gesture of thought, which might take any materials for its embodiment—a jar in Tennessee, for instance, or the eye of a blackbird among mountains. …The form actively guides our attention to what signifies (the gesture of thought) and away from what does not (the object chosen to manifest it). Yet the form … cannot exist without some object. In short, form and content are inseparable. This is a commonplace; the poem exhibits “unity,” meshing its formal and material causes.
—Charles O. Hartman, Free Verse

A poem is not so much a thought, or series of thoughts, as it is a mind.
—Howard Nemerov, “Speaking Silence”

I was going to explain why I pulled these quotes, but a quick search discovers that I’ve already done that here and here.

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