Real Poetry
Free verse is naught but prose in guise.
No one can tell me otherwise.
Confessions, images, and aches
Are less than what a poem makes.
It need not rhyme but it must scan.
It needs a rhythmic formal plan
Which should not be Procrustean,
May even be Shakespearean,
But must be fashioned for success.
Amorphous words do not impress.
Iambic couplets like these here,
Enough to transmit meaning clear,
Bombard our brains with booming sound
Which simple prose has never found.
Confessions, images, and aches
Are best conveyed when one partakes
Of cogently well-ordered verse.
Melodic, liquid lines immerse
Us in the souls of humankind
Imposed on each enraptured mind.
Strict prosody is difficult.
Bright words alone do not result
In poetry worth eye or ear
Unless it resonates sincere.
Free versers take the easy road.
They only want to purge their load.
Unwittingly, though they presume,
The fact remains that those for whom
Free verse is the poetic norm
Admit they fail to master form.
Eric v.d. Luft, Ph.D., was Curator of Historical Collections at SUNY Upstate Medical University from 1987 to 2006 and has taught at Villanova University, Syracuse University, Upstate, and the College of Saint Rose. He is the author, editor, or translator of over 690 publications in philosophy, religion, librarianship, history, history of medicine, politics, humor, popular culture, and nineteenth-century studies.
Your well-structured and rhyming poem is greatly appreciated in this era of prose and prosody that in modern culture has been confused with poetry because the author thinks it is.
From start to finish, you sum it up very nicely.
I agree, Eric!
The fact remains that those for whom
Free verse is the poetic norm
Admit they fail to master form.
I recall attending a poetry reading and Q and A with two prominent poets in the state we lived in at the time. They read poems–all free verse–then took questions. After a bit I asked why they didn’t use formal verse in their work. The first, a woman, answered smugly, “Well, there are just so many ways to rhyme June with moon, ha, ha.” The second, more honest, said, “It’s just too hard.” Precisely as you noted in the lines excerpted above. Free verse is rarely poetry. Very rarely. Hard as it may be, we need to press on with what makes poetry a thing of art and source of wonder. Well done.
I couldn’t agree more, Eric – to me, it’s always well worth the effort to weave ones ‘message’ in ‘rhyme’ –
Our Muses would be be best-buds, no doubt.
Only If They Rhyme
“You write, I see, exclusively in rhyme,” the patron said… “doesn’t prose appeal to you?” she quizzed the noted bard.
“Prose is fine,” the man replied, “but here is why I do — writing metered rhyme – for me, is relatively hard!”
Turning out a piece of prose, for me, is fairly easy – laying out the concepts of my themes takes little time
When off’ring them — haphazardly — while many focused hours are needed virtually every time I try the same — in rhyme!
You’ll find, in my portfolio, two quarters of my work will either stoke a mem’ry in your mind – or make you laugh…
While those I view as ‘meaningful’ — exposing and defining what our lives are all about — comprise the other half.
But I won’t try convincing you to alter your technique — assuming you’re a ‘proser’ — but I’ve noticed… over time…
95% of those I’ve asked — “Do you like poems?”, have stated, firmly – “Yes — I do —
but only if they rhyme!”
In case some of you guys haven’t heard, free verse is different from unrhymed blank verse.
Free verse is a late 19th-century development. Blank verse in English goes back to the sixteenth century, and was used extensively by Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, and many other poets. It is part of the English poetic tradition.
Greek and Latin poetry had no rhyme at all, even though it was metrically formal.
If you want to attack free verse, go right ahead. But when you claim that all good poetry in English has to rhyme, you are not being traditional at all.
We used to have a motto here at the SCP that went “Rhyming, Rhythmic, Rapturous.” Thank God it’s gone.
I agree. These two lines are witness to it:
“It need not rhyme but it must scan.
It needs a rhythmic formal plan”
I write both form poetry and free verse. The later helps enormously in making my prose writing more lyrical.
That said, a well argued, poetic opinion.
Eric, I like the poem. My favorite line is “Melodic, liquid lines immerse…” Great alliteration, assonance and consonance. And I fully agree with the content!