| Let’s understand formalism to mean not “reliance on established forms” so much as “belief in the efficacy of structures.” What the hell could this pretentious crap possibly mean, you ask? I’m glad you did. In poetry, a formalist is someone who favors established forms: sonnets, villanelles, haiku. Who knows how this terms might pan out in rock criticism — I suppose that a fifties revivalist might be one kind of formalist, and the the Canadians who churn out the stuff that Nashville produces by the bucketload might be another. What any posited formalism has in common with all other types is the conviction that you can say as much with form as you can with function. |