Halls of the Dark Muse

Ok I am really annoyed, though about something rather minor, it is just the kind of thing that bugs me, and so I felt like ranting about it.

I have this anthology of Contemporary Poetry, half of it I find interesting, half of it I find unbearable, and a small portion I actually like.

Anyway, I was reading this, (or I should say trying to read it, I became so irritated with it, that I could not finish the whole thing) called Sheffield Ghazal 4: Driving West, by Galway Kinnell

and the poem was not a freaking Ghazal, it did not even remotely bare a resemblance to a Ghazal. It was not written in the structure of a Ghazal, and it did not contain the elements that make a Ghazal, a Ghazal.

It the word Ghazal was not in the title of the poem, while I was reading it, at no point would I have thought. Oh, hey this reminds me of a Ghazal.

If a poet gets inspired by a certain style of poetry and wants to modify it for their own needs, that is one thing, but don't try to claim you are writing something that you are not.

If I read a sonnet, and decided I was inspired by that to write my own version of a sonnet that did not follow any of the actual traditional rules of a sonnet, than I did not write a sonnet. I am not going to claim that it is a sonnet. I will say, I was inspired to write this poem by reading a sonnet.

But just because you are a contemporary poet does not mean you get to write anything the hell you want and claim it is this or that style, if it really isn't.

That is taking Poetic Licence, or Artistic Liberty a stretch too far.