I once had a conversation with a highly
regarded poet (Sphereans, trust me--most
of you would consider this person a delightful person
and terrifically talented poet, but the name is not
going to be revealed) who ended one of our
little set-tos with this observation:
"I don't care if your question is logical.
I reserve the right to be both illogical AND
right at the same time! All your logical
questions are TRICK questions."

Thank God this is a versifier who
writes in meter and rhyme--not in

badly lineated
though not altogether ragged
prose that
turns
on certain
words
for no apprent
reason.

Actually Susan, it's the "so much depends" that makes this a little gem for me. Precisely because it is never answered and forces the reader to elucidate that "so much," it lifts this out of the realm of ordinary description. And as a study in line breaks, you can hardly do worse.

What I have found really, really, really amusing while reading this thread is the feeling some people take this poem almost as a personal insult. But the question was hardly fair to begin with, now was it? The vast majority of the more vocal members of this workshop site detest free verse--and have no hesitation proclaiming it The Death of Poetry As We Know It. So posting this was like giving heroin to an addict; you do rather know what to expect. What would be interesting to me would be to post this poem on a site specializing in free verse; you know, where the participants think metered verse is Fusty Old Boring Shit That Should Have Gone The Way Of The Horse And Buggy. I guess you'd know what to expect there too.

No, it isn't the greatest poem ever written. It isn't even the best poem written by William Carlos Williams. But for me it is a little gem, like his "as the cat/climbed down."

This whole thread makes me think of something Rhina said here when she was Guest Lariat: it's a shame poetry has divided up into armed camps. I think about that a lot.

Interesing discussion.

Tom

There is of course another possibility--
that free verse is prose. If it is,
investigate the profundity of a "gem"
that asks us to realize that well, a LOT
really, really depends on oh, whatever.

Stripped of its status as a poem, the Williams
would have to compete with other prose
profundities. Verse (that boring old shit
that should have gone away) focuses the human
sensibility on more than just the paraphrasable
content of human speech. It revels in sound
and play and charged language. Without these things,
we are left with:

I think--or at least I'm pretty sure--
I recognize whoever it is that owns this forest,
but he has a domicile down in the hamlet.

i'm not against slight observations in free verse,
but the way this particular poem has been turned
into an icon & a manifesto is absurd. (why couldn't
it've been his poem on the plums in the fridge? i
like that one lots better--at least it SAYS something.)

it is true a lot of us hate Williams for the way he
seemed to give license to all manner of chopped-prose
poeticules & he's not responsible for them any more
than Whitman is, but even if you put in line-breaks
more reasonable than the ones he chose, there still
aren't many good poems in the lot.

--the trouble is, i think, this weird sort of literary
nationalism that makes poets go looking for ancestors
& a canon that is bounded by our 2 oceans & the 40th
parallel (or whatever it is). not only British, not only
Canadian, Australian & all the poets in post-colonial
societies who chose to write primarily in English--not
only these are our peers & our tradition: but also every
poet everywhere we can get our minds around even if only
darkly in the mirror of translation...

"American Literature" is a brand label without even
teaching value.

Often as not I find myself on both sides of the prose & poetry conflict. However, that said...

"Piety practised in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendour of beneficence."
--Samuel Johnson (1709–1784


------------------

Art that simply asks "how can this be art" seems terribly sterile to me, but "found art", when it was new, might hope to do something more: it tries to get us to look at ordinary things with the attention and expectations we bring to art. Insofar as it does this, it does what art is supposed to do -- to get us to see the world afresh.

The trouble is that this strategy wears out very quickly -- after the third or fourth found object, people just think "oh, more mundane objects presented as art" and yawn.

At a time when metrical expectations were firmly established in the minds of readers, getting them to look at a bit of ordinary prose AS poetry may well produce an interesting musical effect -- something akin to syncopation. And if you are expecting elevated Tennysonian language, the very blandness of the Wheelbarrow sentence may be striking.
The odd breaks may well focus our attention, so long as we are expecting them to make more sense.
So, much depends upon the very expectations Williams is himself eroding.

So maybe Williams's poem really was a poem. But THIS explanation of why it is a poem makes it hard to see how free verse can be written today -- now that readers come to poetry almost without expectations.

I am not arguing against free verse or saying that it is only prose. Rather, I'm pointing to the limitation of one defense of free verse, and asking if anyone knows a justification without such limitations. Can someone explain how free verse works AS VERSE without playing off metrical expectations?

I am curious about one thing. And realize this is coming from a person who started writing in metered verse all of six months ago--so I am not one of those people who think verse is boring old shit (if I am going to waste my time and get carpal tunnel syndrome, I would rather play backgammon). What would you say if someone said to you verse is just a complete waste of time because it is an artificial affectation (and yes, that is an exact quote from someone who read one of my metered poems)? Would that convince you to start writing free verse? I started writing in verse because I read Dana Gioia's essay and thought he made a good deal of sense--and because it was fun. Frustrating (often), but fun. And I now wind up writing about 75% formal verse to 25% free verse. But I doubt I ever would have attempted to do so if I were browbeat into it. That is what I think Rhina means by "armed camps"--and I see this attitude on both sides of the battlefield.

It's my jewel box Len. I don't expect anyone else to admire, ipso facto, my gems. And I also realize what may be a jewel to me may be zirconium to you. OK, fair enough. That's why the library is so big. But I don't think that telling people free verse is shit is going to convince a single person who likes it that all poetry should have a metrical or syllabic or accentual structure. I think all it ultimately does is make people defensive. And the war continues. I think it's a shame.

What I loved, besides Gioia's essay, was Rhina's explanation that a poem is a box the poet is dancing within. What a marvelous metaphor. Some people like to waltz or foxtrot, but there will always be people who prefer to dance as the music they hear moves them. You may consider what they do spastic or, at the very least. lacking in elemental grace. But there are lots of rhythms in this world--and isn't it fun just to dance?

Best regards to you--
Tom

I'm completely uninterested in browbeating anyone into writing any kind of verse -- and I hope this post and my last one come across attempts at understanding both metrical and free verse (and the difference) better.

And if you reclassify a piece of free verse as "short prose-piece with line breaks" -- it's still possible that this is a great piece of short-prose-with-line-breaks. The reclassification doesn't deprive it of value -- and of course you could paraphrase away much of Proust's greatness, even though he writes prose.
Still, the classification issue is rather interesting -- so long as you don't build too much into it. What is the most convenient and sensible way to make the distinction between poetry and prose? Both prose and verse can be musical -- neither preserves its value through all paraphrases. What aim is poetry meant to achieve that prose is not? Is meter the only way to achieve this aim? Or is there one one shared aim, but verse is one means to it and prose is another?

Tom's comparison raises an interesting point for me. Those who dance as the music moves them usually dance alone, but insofar as a poet writes for a reader different from himself (insofar as poetry is different from performance art) the poet does have a kind of dance-partner -- the reader.

With metrical verse, it's pretty clear how to follow the poet's lead. I would say that, though his verse is free, Whitman can be followed, as well, because he relies upon prose rhythms (sentence, clause, phrase) and the reader's memory of the Bible.
In the case of some free-verse poets, though, it is hard for me to figure out how to dance with them. Looking at their stuff on the page doesn't tell me how to make music out of it (to change the metaphor).
When I listen to some of these poets reading their work, they read some very mundane phrases in a kind of sing-song -- which certainly makes them seem alien and new -- but I'd never have guessed from what's on the page that you were supposed to sing it like that.
Some rules, shared by reader and writer, about how to determine "the beat" or at least about how to read line breaks aloud may be very hard to dispense with. To the degree that there are such rules, in free verse, what are they? If there are several mutually incompatible sets of rules, how does the reader identify which set of rules to use? (These are not merely rhetorical questions.)

[This message has been edited by ChrisW (edited January 04, 2002).]

Chris: two fascinating posts from you. I am not sure how to answer the questions you raise. The only point I was trying to make is that why we love certain poets--or hate them--is a personal quirk. Some people love meter. Others would rather have major dental surgery without anaesthesia than be subjected to it. I feel the same way about Tennyson. You can read him to me until you are blue in the face and all I will want to do is smack Tennyson around with a large, hardbound thesaurus. I know it's completely irrational, but so is a good deal of love (and hate), and all the arguing in the world is not going to change my opinion. Well, at least on Tennyson. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

OK, many people on here don't consider the red wheelbarrow poem a "real" poem. It is, admittedly, a curio. But the argument doesn't stop there--it is extended to ALL free verse. And I don't know how condemning ALL free verse is going to make someone who loves it say, "Oh my God, how blind I have been all these years. Free verse IS shit. Let me rush out right now and buy the collected works of Frost, Pope and Lord Byron." Wouldn't it be better to show people how much fun you can have with meter and rhyme, how playful it can be? It's like reading Chaucer in Middle English--the jokes are MUCH better.

I realize I am the cheese who stands alone on this one. Haven't you noticed that the people who write free verse on these boards--presumably the very ones people who love metrical, syllabic, accentual verse want to "win over"--NEVER participate in these discussions? I sure have. And I wonder if that is because they don't particularly want to hear things like, to take one example, "Verse (that boring old shit that should have gone away) focuses the human sensibility on more than just the paraphrasable content of human speech. It revels in sound and play and charged language." I am sure people who write free verse expend as much effort, have as much fun with sounds and textures, as your most dedicated sonneteer. And not that I mean to pick on Len--I think a good deal of what he says has tremendous validity. It's just that this war between free v formal is so voraciously energy-consuming. And if one side "wins," who loses?

perhaps the two tribes are not fated to unite again,
but i would like to uphold for both the single
necessary dogma that a line break equals a perceptible
auditory pause...