New Formalism

New Formalism is a late-20th and early 21st century movement in American poetry that has promoted a return to metrical and rhymed verse.

Origins and intentions

The term 'New Formalism' was first used in the article 'The Yuppie Poet' in the May 1985 issue of the AWP Newsletter, which was an attack on what was perceived as a movement returning to traditional poetic forms; the article accused the movement's poets not only of political conservatism but also yuppie materialism. New Formalism was a reaction against various perceived deficiencies in the practice of contemporary poets. In his 1987 piece "Notes on the New Formalism," Dana Gioia wrote: "the real issues presented by American poetry in the Eighties will become clearer: the debasement of poetic language; the prolixity of the lyric; the bankruptcy of the confessional mode; the inability to establish a meaningful aesthetic for new poetic narrative and the denial of a musical texture in the contemporary poem. The revival of traditional forms will be seen then as only one response to this troubling situation." For women formalists, the situation was complicated by gender; as Annie Finch wrote in 1994 in the Introduction to "A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form by Contemporary Women", "Readers who have been following the discussion of the "New Formalism" over the last decade may not expect to find such a diversity of writers and themes in a book of formal poems; the poems collected here contradict the popular assumption that formal poetics correspond to reactionary politics and elitist aesthetics. . . .The passion for form unites these many and diverse poets."

New Formalism (architecture)

New Formalism is an architectural style that emerged in the United States during the mid 1950s and flowered in the 1960s. Buildings designed in that style exhibited many Classical elements including "strict symmetrical elevations" building proportion and scale, Classical columns, highly stylized entablatures and colonnades. The style was used primarily for high-profile cultural, institutional and civic buildings. They were "typically constructed using rich materials such as marble, granite or man-made composites and also incorporated certain qualities of concrete that allowed for the creation of distinctive forms such as umbrella shells, waffle slabs and folded plates".Edward Durrell Stone's New Delhi American Embassy (1954), which blended the architecture of the east with modern western concepts, is considered to be the start of New Formalism architecture.

"Common features of the New Formalism style, which was quite often expensive to build, include: