Poetics: Ballad, Sonnet, Lyric, Line: The Stories of Poetic Forms

What happens to forms across time? Moving beyond the juxtaposition of history and theory, we explore theories of poetic forms in several historical periods and compare these to 20th- and 21st-century ideas. Using the ballad, the sonnet, the lyric, and the line as grounding, we collect, read, and critique both criticism and poetry. When and how does an example of a poetic form take the place of a story of a poetic form? Do our methodologies of reading poetry now and in the past rely on a shared understanding of what a form might mean? How, and when, do poetic forms become abstractions of genres (or abstractions of persons)?