The Role of Rules

What is the role of rules in art? Should the artist (poet, painter, musician) seek to adhere to a clearly defined, detailed set of rules? Should the artist ignore all rules and refuse to have anything to do with them?

The Ghazal Page has just published David Jalajel's "Rules for Writing Arabic Ghazals in English." This article puts together the essentials of David's previous articles on using Arabic forms for English ghazals, microrhyme in ghazals, and enjambment. These articles present detailed information about the meter, rhyme, lineation, and stanzas of Arabic ghazals. David gives examples of his own English ghazals using these features as well as some examples from historical poets.

In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche distinguishes the Apollonian and Dionysian types: the Apollonian values clarity, reason, order; the Dionysian values energy, intensity, spontaneity. These two, quite recognizable, attitudes may be found in poets' need for rules. The poet who needs rules, insists on them and on strict conformity to them, is Apollonian. The poet who despises rules, seeks open, organic forms, and finds rules stultifying is Dionysian.

This kind of dichotomy is very abstract: an extremely Dionysian poet, like Walt Whitman or Allen Ginsberg, will sometimes betray an interest in form and in rules; an Apollonian poet, like T. S. Eliot, will show moments of glowing spontaneity. Yes, this division is another version of the Classical vs. Romantic dichotomy and is equally superficial, yet the distinction is helpful as a starting point and as a caution to us not to make easy classifications of ourselves and others.

Me? I tire of the Dionysian "do your thing" attitude; I also tire of the Apollonian "submit to tradition" attitude. The poetry I return to includes work that tends toward either extreme, as well as work that doesn't fit these categories. People, language, and the world are too complex and subtle to be placed in one of two exclusive boxes.