I would like to expand on yesterday’s post in which I stated why I write what I write. My tendency is to favour the poetic construct of free verse, because as an artist I do not like to be bound by rules; I also find that free verse gives me far more scope to express what I am feeling and thinking. I can understand that there are people out there who react against this poetic construct, but I cannot understand why because in refusing to acknowledge it they are missing out on so much great poetry; Walt Whitman, for example, being one of its finest exponents.
I would finish with two quotes from An Introduction to English Poetry by James Fenton:-
Consulting the Oxford Companion to English Literature (New Edition 1985) on the subject of metre, we find in the last paragraph that ‘Verse in the twentieth century has largely escaped the straitjacket of traditional metrics.’ Verse has escaped. It is not even a question of poetry having escaped, leaving verse (as in light verse) with arms bound tightly across its chest, in the manner of the traditional straitjacket. Verse has escaped. Verse is free.
The great thing, wherever you stand as a poet, is to avoid the kind of dichotomies implied by such a statement. Metrics are not a device for restraining the mad, any more than ‘open form’ or free verse is a prairie where man can do all kinds of manly things in a state of wholesome unrestrictedness.
and:-
One should say to the free spirits grazing their herds on open form: good luck, free spirits!
But if the land looks overgrazed, one should feel free to move on.
