The modern poetic landscape often resembles a sprawling, unkempt garden. Free verse dominates, sprawling without trellises. Into this wild growth steps Brian Yapko, a figure who wields a gavel in one hand and a pen in the other. In a recent episode of Classical Poets Live, host Andrew Benson Brown sat down with the Santa Fe-based poet to dissect the curious intersection of appellate law and the strictures of the villanelle.
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The Architecture of Argument
Yapko is not a bohemian drifting through cafes. He is a litigator. To the uninitiated, the courtroom and the stanza seem worlds apart—one governed by statutes, the other by muses. Yapko dismantles this binary.
Legal briefs require a narrative. A lawyer must construct a reality from facts, binding them with logic and precedent. Formal poetry demands a similar rigor. A sonnet does not allow for waste; every syllable must justify its existence. The constraint is the point. When Yapko speaks of his craft, he describes a process where the “cage” of form forces the “bird” of creativity to sing with greater urgency. The lawyer’s discipline feeds the poet’s fire.
Channeling Catullus
The conversation inevitably drifts toward Odi et Amo, Yapko’s collection that engages with the Roman poet Catullus.
Translation is often a betrayal. Yapko avoids this by seeking the emotional frequency rather than the literal word. Catullus was not a statue; he was a man consumed by a toxic, volatile love. He hated. He loved. He felt the burn of betrayal. Yapko’s work strips away the marble dust to reveal the bleeding flesh underneath. He brings the ancient invective into the 21st century, proving that the geometry of human heartbreak has not changed in two thousand years.
The Vagabond and the Esquire
Andrew Benson Brown, the host, offers a foil to Yapko’s structured demeanor. Describing himself as a “vagabond” and the author of an epic-in-progress, Legends of Liberty, Brown approaches the interview with the curiosity of a historian digging for artifacts.
Their dialogue is not merely an interview. It is a strategy session for the New Formalism movement. They discuss the necessity of structure in an age of chaos. While the world deconstructs meaning, these two reconstruct the vessel that holds it.
The screen flickers. The Zoom connection bridges distances. But the real connection is an ancient one: the belief that words, arranged in the right order, possess the weight of law and the flight of prayer.
poetry/benson brown/readings
