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BRADLEY R. STRAHAN envoiI'm all, all erasure now. Be careful not to read me out
©2007 BRADLEY R. STRAHAN
| "I had many things to write, but I will not with ink and pen write unto thee..." |
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BRADLEY R. STRAHAN envoiI'm all, all erasure now. Be careful not to read me out ©2007 BRADLEY R. STRAHAN |
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| Poetry endangers the established order in the soul." |
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B. R. STRAHAN IN DEFENSE OF "FREE" VERSE Many people share the misconception that free verse is easier to write, and therefore inferior to traditional forms. On the contrary, well crafted free verse is at least as difficult to write. Indeed it may be harder to do right, because poets often forget that it too requires rhythm. Most laymen, and many amateur poets have the impression that any-old-thing can be called "free" verse just as long as it is shaped like a poem, or worse simply named "poem". Regrettably this is true of too much of the verse that is found today in magazines and poetry books. Freedom can be dangerous when it's abused, in poetry just as in politics. Not only does free verse require the same care in the selection of words as traditional verse and the same dedication to walk that "razor's edge" between the moving and the maudlin, between magic and meaningless obscurity; but it too requires serious attention to rhythm. Dance is a particularly good metaphor for the difference between the rhythms of free, and what we think of as "traditional" verse: In English, traditional verse depends upon fixed patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables. This relatively rigid approach to rhythm is similar to formal court dances like the minuet. Free verse depends far more on the poet's sensitivity to the sound of natural language rhythms. This resembles modern dance forms and gives free verse both its power and its flexibility. Neither free nor traditional verse has a corner on great poetry and equally bad verse has been done in either style. Some of our best modern poets are masters at both styles, Louis Simpson for instance. Also, traditional verse was not so "traditional" in the formative days of the English language. For example, Anglo-Saxon and some 14th century poetry emphasized alliteration rather than rhyme. Even Shakespeare utilized a little free verse in The Tempest and wrote large quantities of blank verse. There is much good to be said for well crafted, stressed, end-rhymed verse but no more than for equally well crafted verse that uses other techniques. Free verse is foremost of these in modern English prosody. ©2007 B. R. STRAHAN |
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| Repair Your Mind...Read More Poetry! |
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RIC MASTEN A Farm Accident the horses shied and then wild-eyed bolted from the field racing back toward the barn traces flying the mower still attached and running close behind your father shouting an alarm as that ugly snapping arm reached out taking everything off at the ankle weeds and corn and hollyhock and then in slow motion sweeping through the stems of two small boys frozen in surprise and sometime later in a photograph we find those grinning little peg-legged Petes proud as punch posing though the color and shape are exactly right an artificial limb is what it is and can be put on and taken off but the story that comes with it walks and walks and walks ©2007 RIC MASTEN |
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