To Hell With Formal Verse!

Constrained by laws, I think that poetry

Deserves much free and broad and lucid thought

Unbound from chains of silly prosody

That only serves to harden what is sought.

Why should we rhyme? Why should we versify?
We do not speak with accents on our words.

Am I not right or do I mystify?
Why should we follow all these metric nerds?

Then come and join this noble cause, my friends;

And let us stand together to rehearse,

And hope this tyranny of meter ends.

Oh, pardon me, for this is formal verse!

Reviews

[Dane Osborne]

Ha ha! It appears we both learned how to write poetry from opposite ends, old friend. I will explain. From what I have always gathered from your writing it seemed that you develped a mastery of form/technique early on, probaly before you ever found your voice.

But in my circumstance, it was the other way around. I actually started out without knowing that stuff and just messing around with free verse. Being as smart/intelligent a person as I may be (or have been described) I have always been very well read from an early age and from that, I had good intuition about what made "good sounding" writing and what didn't. This is why my early efforts worked as well as they did.

I think this actually served me well because by not feeling constrained by rules from early on, I was more free-minded about use of imagery and wordplay than others with more formal training would be. I think that is what helped me find my voice.

Nowadays, I actually am seriously learning all the stuff about meter and the different poetic forms and it is all in the attempt to use it in a modern, idiosyncrantic way.

So it seems you learned frontwards and I learned backwards.

Just making an observation with that.

Anyways, it was a very enjoyable poem and I dug how you used form so well in a poem that criticizes it. Well done and very clever

[Abdul Aziz]

Thank you very much for your thoughts, Dane.

But I'm afraid my intended meaning didn't get across as well as I'd have hoped for. I wanted to convey that form and meter do not contradict freedom and phrasing. Meter doesn't inhibit. It liberates the poet. We can create perfectly normal sounding poetry even while strictly adhering to meter. I wanted the ending line to convey that even though this poem sounds "natural", it was written in strict metric framework.

[Tomás Ó Cárthaigh]

Heck, I missed that entirely... so your on our side, as in the formalist tradition, yes?

[Abdul Aziz]

Yes. Wholeheartedly. Poetry with meter and rhyme is what the world needs.

[Dane Osborne]

I concede that I misunderstood the point that you were trying to make. I do agree that form and meter and appropriate use of ryhme (key word is appropriate) is more needed in modern poetry. I have actually been working alot with sonnets here lately and have written a good number of them. In doing so, it amazes me how much more can be done with the 14 line form than what has been attempted. With my "free form" poems, I now often integrate "old syle" phrases and vocabulary for a unique effect and i feel satisfied with the results in that. Abdul, I was only commenting on how my course of education has been different than yours. American public schools aren't that great, to be honest. How I interpreted that poem (however faulty the interpretation) made me think of that observation. If I had your knowledge of technique (working on it and learning very fast) and mixed it with the things that i am already good at then I know that I will have something amazing on my hands. That's what I aspire at right now when it comes to my poetry.

[Tomás Ó C..]

Im a fan of the formal verse, as you can see by my writings. Free verse is OKish in bits, but as fences are needed for fields, so are rules for poetry.

And Im a Rhymofacist!!!!

[kakarot]

a spell binding poem
makes the reader wonder.....
although didnt quite feel the last para !!

[Dinesh Sairam]

I found 'We do not speak with accents on our tongue' more appealing.. but I understand, since 'tongue' has limited rhymes. And as I said before, the last stanza renders the poem satiric. So if that's what you intended, then it's certainly a great write at that.

Keep writing.

[Coyote Poetry]

There is no rules for poetry. Each Poet and Writer had their reason to write. Great writers of our time were laugh at once. Now they outlived the people who wanted to destroy their work. Better to be the lone Poet then copy the style of another. My friend, your style is your own and appreciate by and many more. Thank you for your thoughts and your words. A outstanding poem.
Coyote