Well, Sam, you must think the poor guy deserves all these backhanded compliments. Even Ben Mazer didn't get this kind of treatment!

With friends like Sally Cook....

You fooled me, Sam. But in my defense, one of the definitions of English is "of or relating to the chief language of Great Britain, the U.S., etc." (Merriam-Webster). But I should have known that wasn't what you meant.

Mike Juster opened a thread some time ago asking which poets will "survive" in 25 years. I don't recall any sphereans mentioning John's name. Maybe I have that wrong. I don't know how to capture old threads. Maybe someone else does.

John, you must have made quite the impression at West Chester. Ha! Otherwise, you are receiving a lot of early Valentines.

Cheers to you, John.

Greg

The binary thinking of the poem troubles me. Can't I enjoy formal verse AND free verse? Why must I choose one or the other? Can't I appreciate Whitworth without pissing on Whitman and Williams?

Must everything these days be divided into This and That--with This associated with all that is good, and That associated with an evil so great that civilization depends on its complete repudiation?

Also, whatever happened to "Show, Don't Tell"? Why not show us how wonderful formal verse is by actually writing a wonderful formal poem (preferably on a topic that more than 0.0001% of the population actually cares about), instead of telling us how wonderful formal verse is in a preachy, petty temper tantrum that happens to be rhymed and metered?

Not-so-great formal poems proclaiming "Free verse is not so great" have an insurmountable pot/kettle problem.

What Julie just said. I remember first reading Whitman and Keats when I was about 16 ('Song of Myself' and 'The Eve of St Agnes' specifically). Both blew my mind. They still do. I had little context and no idea they were exemplars of some great poetic divide. I just read the linked poem. It's unfunny and pointless.

(And, as has been pointed out, with its wheelbarrow and plums tellingly inaccurate!)

[Neverminded.]

Reading it again, I suppose she isn't confusing Whitman with WIlliams. She's blaming Whitman for giving birth to 'all that free verse clamor' of which Williams' two most famous poems are held up as representatives. It's all so petty. No more sophisticated than a bloke in a pub dismissing all modern art by saying 'my five year old could paint that stuff'

The first two poets who made an impression on me were Keats and cummings, with Roethke following close behind. I also liked it all, though I must admit that my poetry-writing education was far too biased against formalism and I managed to major in English at Brown University without anyone once making even the slightest attempt to teach me what an iamb or a trochee was.

Uh, ok. I guess The Divine Comedy is non-fiction.

http://classicalpoets.org/10-greates...-ever-written/