[John Beaton]

John, I agree with you that rhyme and meter should not have been displaced. But to the extent that they have, can you shed light on what happened to make it so?

John

[Vernon Sims]

Please elaborate. I believe that there is a strong movement to dumb everything down so it is easy and convenient. Nothing should be easy. A true artist makes it look easy, but that can only come with mastery. The same with poetry. That includes the study of verse forms, prosody, meter, etc. None should be rejected.

[John Whitworth]

Ah John, I thought I did. It was part of the general assault on craft and skill which could also be seen in the decline of drawing as a necessary, or even desirable, skill in visual art. And at the same time it was part of the erection of Art as a substitute for religion. If Art is a new religion it needs its own mumbo-jumbo from theoreticians and, by God, it has got it.

Free verse ios inherently vicious and needs to be stepped on. Pshaw yet again.

[Chris Childers]

I'm surprised no one has shown up and said this. John (Beaton), you should read Tim Steele's Missing Measures. It's a thorough account of just this thing, how the Modernists came to associate meter with artificial Victorian scansion techniques, how in attempting to renovate poetic diction, they threw out prosody as well, and how they expected some new system to come along in its wake, which never materialized. It seems clear from his prose that TS Eliot didn't really understand meter; he understood that the presence of a normative measure makes variations meaningful, but he didn't know that such rhythmical variation was possible & even standard within the confines of conventional metric, and thought you had to violate the measure in order to introduce variation. Many of the Modernists seemed dismayed later in life by the success of their innovations.

Chris

[John Beaton]

Aah, John. And here am I wondering how "live and let live" isn't a timeless and universal credo!

I can't join you in deprecating free verse or weak craftsmanship. What pursuit worth its salt leaves no room for beginners, amateurs, and dabblers? And there is much wonderful free verse poetry.

But I do find it strange that when, as you say, something works well enough for 300 years and a new wave hits, instead of adding to the already rich heritage, the new way largely supplants the old one. How did so many capable modern poets come to ignore formal poetry? How did we come to a point where a web-page on the history of poetry contains this:

Serious modern poetry is written by and for well-educated, highly literate people. The vocabulary used is deliberately unusual so as to force the reader to think about what is being described. The choice of precisely the correct word is often seen as more important than any devices of form which might dictate the use of a less startling or original word. Rhyme is almost seen as having a cheapening effect.

[John Beaton]

Chris, thanks for that. We cross-posted, and I will try to look up the book but, from what you describe, I'd be interested in quick answers to these questions:

1. Why were the people espousing those views considered so influential as to seemingly convince most of the poetry community? (Were there no John Whitworths rising in defense?)

2. If, in hindsight, it appears that the influence of the Modernists was misplaced, why do the misconceptions it engendered persist?

John

[John Whitworth]

Sorry John, I think that quote is deeply stupid. And what is it doing in the passive voice? How does this cheapening effect work in, say, Philip Larkin's work? In Alicia Stallings' work. In mine? In yours?

Oh,and how do you find the 'right' word? How do you know it is right? Who tells you? What tells you? The inner voice? For the third time Pshaw!

[Vernon Sims]

The modern canon includes that which went before and free verse as well. Does believing in something make it invalid? I think not. We look to words for meaning and as source - to Latin roots - educare...to draw out, religere...to bind. I vote for educare...whether it comes through self-study, academic study, or inspiration, or through the courage of poets who are willing to study, grow, and share. Does not each generation have to re-invent the past as a foundation on which to build the future? Am I preaching to the choir? Or am I just being ignored?

[Christopher ONeill]

How did we come to a point where a web-page on the history of poetry contains this:
[lots of nonsense quoted from a website] [John Beaton]

John, with all due respect, your website was put together by Damaris West: a semi-disabled elderly lady with a disabled husband, who self-published a novelette called Skolkham: A tale of good and evil magic, and who has a main website which is mainly about the Tuscan property market, breeding dogs, and cookery.

What interests me more is that T E Hulme's lecture was delivered in 1908. This is well before Prufrock - it is even before Apollinaire's Zone. I'm not sure who T E was championing as free verse poets, but the torchbearers of formal verse at the time would have been characters like Edwin Arnold and Alfred Noyes.

Noyes' verse novel Drake on its own would have been sufficient to turn me against formal verse in 1908. (I might have chosen even worse poets than Edwin Arnold and Noyes, but Noyes' work is still taught in schools all over the English speaking world - and still loved by many young readers who will grow up never to read a poem worth bothering with).

Another thing that interests me is that while we have so many Sphereans convinced that there is a pervasive prejudice against formal verse, I know just as many non-Sphereans just as worried that there is an apartheid in its favour:

http://voices.yahoo.com/in-defense-f...326.html?cat=2

I think both sides are in error: I doubt anyone has ever had a committed opinion either for or against form as such.

I know people who dislike poetry which unsettles their inherited notions of what poetry ought to be like (this is really just another way of saying that they dislike poetry). 'Expert writers' (how difficult is it to get a Creative Writing Certificate these days?) will object to formal verse if they have been taught that form inhibits creativity; or to free verse if they have been taught that poems ought to rime. (Since you only go on the courses you pay for, you can be taught whichever opinion you prefer).

In 1908 free verse was effectively proscribed from serious discourse. The Manchester Guardian would call The Waste Land 'the waste paper' a generation later. T E Hulme's lecture was needed to address that prejudice.

These days there are only individual troupes of performing monkeys who dislike formal verse; or dislike free verse; or dislike poems where every line begins with a capital letter; or think the only real poetry is haikus, or ghazals, or inpirational, or transgender.

Outside the circus the debate is formed in more serious terms.

[John Whitworth]

And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

XI

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

Well, I don't think that's half bad, the last two stanzas of Noyes' 'The Highwayman'. I think children of about ten would like it. And I like it.