Timothy Steele

"We enter life and thus inherit The kingdom of the human voice. The Word is Word because we share it. Wonder encourages our choice To sort out life’s conflicting data, To come to terms with its traumata, To shape ourselves to nothing less Than reasoned self-forgetfulness."

"Because comparatively few poets today write in meters, rhymes, and stanzas, my use of these has resulted in my being labeled a 'formalist.' But I find this term meaningless and even objectionable. It suggests, among other things, an interest in style rather than substance, whereas I believe that the two are mutually vital in any successful poem. I employ the traditional instruments of verse simply because I love the symmetries and surprises that they pro-duce and because meter especially allows me to render feelings and ideas more flexibly and precisely than I otherwise could. This preference is personal and aesthetic, how-ever, I have never imagined that it provided me with access to cultural or spiritual virtue. And despite allegations to the contrary about Missing Measures, I have never said that vers libre is somehow wrong and immoral or that meter is somehow right and pure. The experimental school of Pound, Eliot, Lawrence, and Williams has its own beauties and achievements. But we can prize them justly and build on them, it seems to me, only if we retain a knowledge and appreciation of the time-tested principles of standard versification. Free verse cannot be free, unless there is something for it to be free of."