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20 March 2005: Yesterday, I got into a discussion about "signature styles" of poets. It had started with a post that spoke of becoming "trapped in a signature style." Some then posted comments that seemed to make out that a signature style, or the equivalent, was a weakness. My first (not very well-organized) thoughts follow:
I'm all for a signature style. But it has to be large. You can't get trapped in a signature style, or form, or whatever, unless either you are incapable of exploiting it fully, or it's a poor signature style. I think that many poets search years to get a signature style or the equivalent, and it is they who achieve the most. But I'm biased because I only fairly recently started specializing in long division poems, and now do little else--because I think I can do an unlimited number of things in them (as a poet, and illumagist).
There's also the question of having several signature styles or the equivalent. I think of John M. Bennett who has done literally hundreds of sonnet-sized poems with his personality all over them, but has done framed poems--poems with letters, words, graphics, or the like drawn in a rectangle around them--that are also instantly recognizable as Bennettian. And I also have my "Poem poems," which are signature poems very similar to one another.
Common sense says stay with a form or style or whatever as long as you think you can make it do significantly new (worthwhile) things for you.
Interesting topic about which a lot more could be said. One thing I'm convinced of is that we need a better term for what I'm talking about than "signature style," a term that would cover anything that can make an artwork's creator readily identifiable. "Signature formulation?"
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