Why Free Verse is Bad for Poetry
(Special thanks to guiser1.
Over the weekend, at a discussion group Zach and I go to, we were trying to decide what it means to be a pacifist. Most people said, "Well, I'm a pacifist -- but there are instances where violence is necessary." The consensus -- which I disagree with -- was that pacifists weren't violent unless they had to be.
Which, to me, is a lot like saying "I'm a vegetarian until I crave a burger."
When pacifism is watered down like that, pacifism is then no different from the concept of "good guy." Why even have the word "pacifist" if it's not going to mean someone who never resorts to violence? I also don't know that being a pacifist automatically makes you a good guy. I think that pacifism comes with its own set of philosophical problems.
Free verse is the poetic equivalent of a meat eating vegetarian who's also an ass-kicking pacifist. Free verse is this sort of catch-all category -- "I can't be bothered with rhythm or meter or stuff: I just want to use the Enter key a lot."
Free verse, I don't think, is poetry.
guiser1 tried to explain it to me like this: "Free verse is poetry that is based on the irregular rhythmic CADENCE or the recurrence, with variations, of phrases, images, and syntactical patterns rather than the conventional use of METER. RHYME may or may not be present in free verse, but when it is, it is used with great freedom. In conventional VERSE the unit is the FOOT, or the line; in free verse the units are larger, sometimes being paragraphs or strophes. If the free verse unit is the line, as it is in Whitman, the line is determined by qualities of RHYTHM and thought rather than FEET or syllabic count." But that dog don't hunt with me. Poetry that is based on irregular rhythmic CADENCE is really just...writing? Right? I mean, it's an essay or it's creative fiction with irregular spacing and the misguided belief that commas have no rules.
I think the question a poet needs to ask is: why does this need to be a poem? What does it convey in this form that it couldn't convey in a short essay or graffiti scrawl? Poets need to say to themselves, "Yes, I like my vulva; but does the world need to share my love?" And to that I would say: no. I'm sure your vulva is as lovely as a vulva can be. I, however, think it should remain a dark secret love. If it doesn't need to be a poem, then it doesn't need to be a poem. That doesn't mean you shouldn't jot it down. It just means you don't have to space it funny, or make up your own words. Essays are perfectly fine. Short little bon mots actually make you seem clever. Journal entries where it looks like you took a pair of scissors to it and pasted them haphazardly -- that's not poetry: that's arts-n-crafts.
Modern poetry, much like modern writing, has eschewed the universal for the deeply and troublingly personal. It's navel-gazing at its most irritating. And before you all start taking messages for me from the kettle -- hi: it's a blog. When I write a free-verse ode to my fat thighs or my vulva, we'll talk. Contemporary novels and poems are too locked up in the authors own personal lexicon and mythology.
'Course, who am I, right? Maybe you know something about the modern poetry that I don't. If you think you've got a pretty good defense of modern poetry then I'd like to hear it. The best and worst answers will get an entry of their own. Until then, I leave you with Gerard Manley Hopkins -- who will kick your ass because he has "Manly" in his name:
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
-- "Spring and Fall, to a Young Child"
Over the weekend, at a discussion group Zach and I go to, we were trying to decide what it means to be a pacifist. Most people said, "Well, I'm a pacifist -- but there are instances where violence is necessary." The consensus -- which I disagree with -- was that pacifists weren't violent unless they had to be.
Which, to me, is a lot like saying "I'm a vegetarian until I crave a burger."
When pacifism is watered down like that, pacifism is then no different from the concept of "good guy." Why even have the word "pacifist" if it's not going to mean someone who never resorts to violence? I also don't know that being a pacifist automatically makes you a good guy. I think that pacifism comes with its own set of philosophical problems.
Free verse is the poetic equivalent of a meat eating vegetarian who's also an ass-kicking pacifist. Free verse is this sort of catch-all category -- "I can't be bothered with rhythm or meter or stuff: I just want to use the Enter key a lot."
Free verse, I don't think, is poetry.
guiser1 tried to explain it to me like this: "Free verse is poetry that is based on the irregular rhythmic CADENCE or the recurrence, with variations, of phrases, images, and syntactical patterns rather than the conventional use of METER. RHYME may or may not be present in free verse, but when it is, it is used with great freedom. In conventional VERSE the unit is the FOOT, or the line; in free verse the units are larger, sometimes being paragraphs or strophes. If the free verse unit is the line, as it is in Whitman, the line is determined by qualities of RHYTHM and thought rather than FEET or syllabic count." But that dog don't hunt with me. Poetry that is based on irregular rhythmic CADENCE is really just...writing? Right? I mean, it's an essay or it's creative fiction with irregular spacing and the misguided belief that commas have no rules.
I think the question a poet needs to ask is: why does this need to be a poem? What does it convey in this form that it couldn't convey in a short essay or graffiti scrawl? Poets need to say to themselves, "Yes, I like my vulva; but does the world need to share my love?" And to that I would say: no. I'm sure your vulva is as lovely as a vulva can be. I, however, think it should remain a dark secret love. If it doesn't need to be a poem, then it doesn't need to be a poem. That doesn't mean you shouldn't jot it down. It just means you don't have to space it funny, or make up your own words. Essays are perfectly fine. Short little bon mots actually make you seem clever. Journal entries where it looks like you took a pair of scissors to it and pasted them haphazardly -- that's not poetry: that's arts-n-crafts.
Modern poetry, much like modern writing, has eschewed the universal for the deeply and troublingly personal. It's navel-gazing at its most irritating. And before you all start taking messages for me from the kettle -- hi: it's a blog. When I write a free-verse ode to my fat thighs or my vulva, we'll talk. Contemporary novels and poems are too locked up in the authors own personal lexicon and mythology.
'Course, who am I, right? Maybe you know something about the modern poetry that I don't. If you think you've got a pretty good defense of modern poetry then I'd like to hear it. The best and worst answers will get an entry of their own. Until then, I leave you with Gerard Manley Hopkins -- who will kick your ass because he has "Manly" in his name:
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
-- "Spring and Fall, to a Young Child"
posted by Mike at 1:19 PM
10 Comments:
Vulva!
I agree about the pacisfism thing, absolutely.
However, I have to disagree about Free Verse.
Now, I have HUGE problems with free verse, and most of those problems stem from angsty teenage writers who think they can skip over all the rules of poetry and jump right into the most abstract form of it.
To do free verse well, one has to know all the rules of writing many different kinds of poetry. Only then is free verse worth reading.
And I don't think that the topic or content of the poetry is what necessarily makes free verse bad. I think it's just bad writers writing badly. I'm sure a great poet could make a much more interesting poem about her vulva than most angsty teenage writers could.
Finally, I think it's difficult to define what is poetry and what isn't poetry. Should free verse be forced into the realm of short fiction? I don't think so. Just like fiction is allowed an abstract outlet through train-of-thought type writing, poetry should be allowed an outlet through free verse.
All that said, I think most free verse is garbage. It really takes a skilled poet to do it well.
That's why I've always loved you best, anonymouscoworker.
Vulva!
But after reading about what you said concerning Victorian Literature: You're dead to me.
D.
E.
A.
D.
To me.
Ha ha ha! Like I said in my comments, I don't hate it all, it's just the Brontes and that Austen chick that bug me the most.
philistine.
why can't you understand that as a means of expression by confining yourself to certain formulaic structures you limit the progression of the art.
not all free verse is bad but not all free verse is good lol noob
You're right on the money. I signed up for a site where you can publish poems (sort of), and about 90% of what's published is free verse crap about cutting.
It's easy to hide behind free verse. Nearly anyone can jumble a bunch of words together that sound cool but mean nothing. Try to hide behind a rhyming poem and you'll soon be naked in front of everyone. Take it a step further. Write a rhyming poem about love and there is no shade for you to hide. To rhyme about love, something that has been done well for so long, is no easy task. To circumvent cliche is no easy task. If you want to hide your talent—free verse.
I agree completely. In my culture all poems had to rhyme. Otherwise it is a beautiful prose,with each phrase going on a new line, nothing to do with poetry though. It is hard for me, that American poets don't take the challenge to make it a classic style poem, I hear it as a good short essay, but I have to be polite and smile, when in Rome...
Free-verse is the in-between of blank-verse and prose. It can have the qualities of what most poetry styles possess such as rhyming, set meters, set line count for stanzas and the like. Free-verse however, offers more freedom and uniqueness for the poet themselves. When having to stay in the parameters of certain styles it can potentially limit the creativity of the poet.
Because free-verse has more freedom for the poet to take hold of and go with, it allows the poet to potentially create their own substyle of free-verse. Due to the fact that free-verse doesn't have the amount of set parameters that most other styles have it can give the poet a way to potentially create something more beautiful than they would have created otherwise, following a set of rules like you do with other styles.
While there are opinions of whether or not free-verse can or cannot be poetry, it is the balance between poetry and prose. You need to have some middle ground when having different types of writing that have very specific rules or guidelines they need to follow.
This is of course my own opinion. Everyone is entitled to have theirs, this is simply my own. You can criticize me all you wish I don't care. My view on this will not be changed.
Post a Comment
<< Home