Reginald Gibbons: Forms of Thought in Poetry and Fiction

“The epigram, the elegy, the sonnet, the epic, the isolated perception of the concrete world; the syllabic line, the stanza, the list; an invocation of the Muse or of God, the use of appropriated texts or subjects from historical sources, intertwined narratives, the third-person omniscient point of view, diction as if of someone speaking—all of these and many more artistic devices, amount to forms of thought. Writers call it ‘craft,’ either with a strong sense of studying it the way one studies music, or looking down on it, with the rationale that learning such craft can never guarantee that anyone will write a memorable, or even a good, book. Craft is not what writing is really about, they say. They are right and they are wrong. Those who really do learn such forms of thought often find they have more to say than they had dreamed of, now that they have learned ways of forming thoughts and feelings—or ways that invite thoughts and feelings to form.” —From “Forms of Thought,” a Northwestern University Center for the Writing Arts blog post by Reginald Gibbons