Some related questions for our Lariats and other Erats:

--To what extent can one maintain a commitment to formalism alongside an appreciation of free verse (as a writer and/or as a reader)? To what extent can a devotee of free verse appreciate formal poetry?

--Do writers of formal poetry tend to stick to formal poetry once they've mastered its challenges (meter, rhyme, etc.)? How many formalists today also write good free verse?

--Is it the poem or the poet who decides what form the writing takes?

--How likely are poets writing today to label themselves as writers who focus exclusively on either form or free verse?

--How deep and wide is the division between free verse and formal poetry in the contemporary literary/publishing scene?

I realize these are loaded questions, and I expect that asking them on these boards will most likely elicit a certain set of answers -- but I decided to pose them anyway and see what happens. They emerged after a recent heated discussion with a poet friend of mine. She is passionately devoted to free verse and tends to believe that formalism is "dead".... an attitude that is hardly new or novel, alas.... and one I certainly don't share. (Wouldn't be here if I did, would I?) We got to talking about New Formalism and divisons between different types of poetry and different types of poets, and I've been thinking about it ever since.

I look forward to your thoughts, opinions, rants, and answers, and I'm interested to see what kind of a discussion might come from all of this.

Lilith

Well Lilith, excellent questions to ask and I know I am looking forward to the responses/discussion.

nyctom

These are interesting questions. Personally, I read and enjoy both formal (not the best term, perhaps, but one which we use by default) and free verse. I write a certain amount of free verse, and, indeed, some of my "formal" verse is such loose blank verse as to be, practically, free (free verse poets would likely register it as "free"--and indeed many formal poets would say it is beyond the pale for form). I also write and read very strict traditional forms, and lately have been leaning more that way. I have a couple of different "modes" in which I work, and usually switch every so often when I feel I am in danger of getting in a rut.

One of the living poets I most enjoy, Seamus Heaney, is equally at home in both elements. I will say that many of the "free verse" poets I admire most tend to have done an extensive apprenticeship in "formal" verse, and so have something to break away from--or else employ a dynamic tension between freedom and restriction, such as T.S. Eliot's mostly iambic but heterometric "free" verse, really vers libre (a la "Prufrock"). I will say that in my opinion, free verse almost needs traditional verse to play off of in order to have any meaning as "free".

Generally, "freeversers" who believe form is dead, or should be dead, I think to be largely (and sometimes willfully) ignorant of much of the excellent work that has continued to be done in this medium. I am particularly intrigued when this includes a lot of hostility to the idea (which I dare say it often does, as I have witnessed on other boards)--as if "form" were an actual threat in some way. While you also get SOME of that feeling, occasionally, among the formal fringes, towards 'free' verse, I think most of the good poets writing in form admire a number of free verse poems and poets, and do not feel it a "threat" in any way. Of course, there are the fringes, as I mention.

I have to say, though, that on the whole I feel "free" and "formal" verse to be a false dichotomy--the real difference is between good and bad. The true minority, as Blake says somewhere, I think, are the talented.

I began as a free verser, because I couldn't write in form. The earliest poem in Deed of Gift is from 1976, when I was 25 and had been writing for eight years. My great tutor, RP Warren, told me you had to master form to write free verse, and his examples were compelling. Eliot, Pound, DH Lawrence, Stevens, Crane, etc. I suppose I then thought, if I could master form, why would I ever bother with free verse? And I still feel that way. I think it's interesting that Alicia finds herself gravitating toward tighter formal constraints. That's certainly been the case with me, and it's true of Greg Williamson, Alicia's spectacularly gifted contemporary. Several of us 50-somethings write both ways well--Gioia, Jarman, Mason, Cope, to name but a few. And some of us, Steele, Gwynn, Murphy, Davis, etc., write only in form. What settled my direction was reading Wilbur, who writes only in form. And who has opined that any poet who doesn't use every arrow in the ancient quiver bequeathed us is shortchanging him or herself: assonance, consonance, meter in its infinite variety, alliteration, rhyme, onomatopoeia. And that's just for starters.

The Dean of Spherians, Professor Mezey, excelled at form in his precocious youth, turned successfully to free verse, then returned in triumph to form over the course of three decades. I asked him in this forum how he felt about that, and I ask him again to answer that question.

I'll weigh in briefly, since Tim asked me to. I
think almost everything Alicia said is right on.
I did go in for free verse in the mid-60s, lock
stock and barrel, and though I think I write
decent free verse, I don't feel that my ear for
it is nearly as good as my ear for metrical verse.
There is indeed a deep division among many poets
about the virtues, even the permissibility, of
these modes, but it's an absurd argument. Any
competent poet ought to be able to recognize good
verse, whether free or otherwise; as Alicia said,
that's the only criterion that matters. (Which
reminds me of Eliot's famous remark, "No verse is
free for the man who wants to do a good job.")
Surely no sensible person would wish that To
Elsie or Dedication for a Plot of Ground
had been written in metrical verse. And there are
other very beautiful poems in free verse. But,
and most young poets don't seem to realize this,
free verse is much more difficult than writing in
the meters. As Wilbur says, in choosing free verse,
you immediately give up most of a poet's tools and
resources. There's is nothing wrong with free verse
per se, but that it has become the standard "form"
in our time is an unmitigated disaster and is one of
the reasons that most contemporary verse in America,
and, I suspect, everywhere else, is complete junk.
I think it was Rexroth who said that if you write
free verse, you're standing out there all alone and
absolutely naked and you'd better have something
really fresh and important to say and powerful ways
to say etc etc---he didn't follow his own advice
and almost of all his free verse, that is, almost
all of his poetry is pretty bad. And Pound (who
also didn't follow his own advice) said that one
should never abandon the meters unless the poem
simply seems to demands a different sort of sound,
some delicate rhythms not available to free verse---
he said something like that. But the meters are
capable of much more delicacy and subtlety of rhythm
than free verse. One very big problem is that except
in the hands of a master, most free verse sounds like
all other free verse. If you read Frost and Hardy,
any good poet for that matter, although the poems are
all in meter, one doesn't sound like another, even if
it's in the same meter. Every poem has its own
sound. That is certainly not the case with Whitman.
Or, much of the time, with Williams, though he had a
better ear. Well, enough. One goes on saying these
things over and over and the poets who don't and won't
and can't write in meter keep saying dumb things like,
Form is dead, and so on and so forth. You can't make
them understand and it's a waste of breath to try.
All you can do (and it too won't work) is to remind
them that Borges, one of the greatest writers ever,
said many times that poets are free to write whatever
they want, but that they shouldn't presume to write
in a mode so difficult as free verse until they've
demonstrated that they are poets, that they know the
poet's craft. The reason so many poets are hostile
to metrical verse is that they know, at some level,
that if that were the norm (as it should be for
free verse to mean anything), they would have to look
for another job. Selah.

>> And Pound (who also didn't follow his own advice) said that one should never abandon the meters unless the poem simply seems to demands a different sort of sound, some delicate rhythms not available to free verse---he said something like that. But the meters are capable of much more delicacy and subtlety of rhythm than free verse. <<

Prof. Mezey, this reference to Pound's idea is the only indication in your post of a differentiating quality in free verse's favor, and you cite it only to reject it. So why would anyone ever want to write in free verse? Or, what is it about the successful free verse poems you mention that makes you feel they would not be better in meter?

I’ve heard the argument that the poet who consistently produces one typology of sound and sensation relinquishes many tools and resources, and I reject it.

The sounds and sensations of good poetry are no more tools than are the eruption of a volcano or neuron decay. The tools of poetry are the voice, pen and paper; sense and sound are goals.

“But the poet uses rhyme and meter as tools to achieve the sound and sensation we find desirable”

If this is the case, then that is why so much regularly metered and end-rhymed writing projects such a poor approximation of what can be achieved in the arena of language sound and writing. Rhyme is no more a tool than the happy circumstance of just the right air particulate to produce a violet sunset. If one happens to come upon such a spectacle and has the capacity to recognize it as good or worthwhile, it’s the same thing as hearing a good rhyme in context and recognizing it as good and worthwhile. The poet does not use or wield rhyme and meter; they are the unlikely and grateful recipients of the experience and chroniclers of such. Revising and searching to such an extent that the poet becomes inured with the process of producing what common or local trends espouse as good rhyme and meter is twice as silly as even expressing the concept. These snufflers are not poets--they’re trufflers—producers of a commodity.

There is no argument for or against providence, though I believe an argument can be made for or against learning to recognize it. This is why writing and reading/assessing poems are so important. A poem is an infinite and capricious beast—believing one can harness it with tools of any sort is the pinnacle of hubris. The best one can do is to attempt to understand the dynamics involved. The deepest understanding is obtained with the farthest-reaching arm. Holding one set of parameters as correct and close to one’s heart is at best the equivalent to navel gazing, and that with a correction for myopia.

Following this, it’s only natural that I reject the assertion that one arena of knowledge must be mastered prior to the undertaking of another, as if talent and serendipity can be accessed on levels like the stacks of a library. “One cannot write good free verse without having first mastered meter and rhyme.” If one could master such a thing, it would be tantamount to understanding creation or the beginning of the universe.

In conclusion, arguments for or against one medium or another to describe divine inspiration is a fool’s errand, regardless of the perceived worth of embedded quotes out of context in some of the above.

BT

Well, you're right; I didn't leave as much room as
probably I should. But I guess some poems do call
for another kind of sound (and this is some sort of
answer to one of the original questions) and don't
seem to want to go into meter. I still write some
non-metrical verse, but not very often. As for the
great poems that already exist in free verse, I guess
I have no warrant for saying that they wouldn't be
as good or better in meter---it's simply that they
are so good as they are, it's hard to imagine them
otherwise. Or to want them otherwise. (And not just
Williams' best stuff, of course; Stevens wrote some
very distinguished free verse, though he is usually
closer to a metrical base than most, and Pound in
some passages in the Cantos, and Louise Bogan,
not as good in free as in metrical but still very good.)
Among more recent poets---I never suggested to Dick
Barnes that he should write more in the meters, except
when we started translating Borges, and he handled the
meters pretty well, but most of his stuff is free and
after all, he had a marvelous ear and wrote free verse
better than just about anybody. Justice has written
some fine poems in free verse, and Coulette did, and
Dugan, though he's pretty hit-and-miss, and Merwin did
once, a good many years back---he has deteriorated, I
think; Jim Wright wrote a few beauties, but oddly,
most of his free verse seems pretty bad to me. And
there are always a few poets who have some wonderful
quality that you enjoy and for which you can forgive
them their lousy verse---for me, Bukowski when he was
funny, and several living poets I will forbear to name.
Zbigniew Herbert was so intelligent and original and
interesting that he survives translation into bad free
verse---although the early translations by Peter Dale
Scott and Milosz are rather good (and that must be
Scott's doing, since Milosz translating himself or
being translated by Hass doesn't sound nearly as good).
Well, I've blabbed on long enough---too long.

Brett, you're flat-out wrong. The mature poet has lived in the world, and he or she articulates his vision of that experience. But it's not as though some Divine Wind simply blows through the oracle. His tools are rhyme, meter, and all the other arrows from that ancient quiver I mentioned. In my jacket comment for Rhina Espaillat's forthcoming book I quoted her half line: "light carpentry in mid-air," which she uses to describe birds in their nest-building, but which I think is an apt metaphor for Rhina's enterprise, and for all of ours as well.

My first comment was uncharacteristically low-key, but I'll say again what I've said elsewhere on the Sphere. 98% of the great poetry that has come down to us over the last 4000 years is formal verse. Free verse is largely a failure, and it has devastated our audience and wasted the lives of many of my talented predecessors. Fine work is being done in form by scores of contemporary poets. We've not yet produced a Robert Frost, but then America has produced only one of him in its 225 years.

So free versers, have at it. I like the four millenia of odds that favor form in every language known to the human race.

Mr. Mezey, I appreciate and look forward to your and most everyone’s babbling on the subject and I’m thrilled to think we’re of the same mind in terms of forbearance, but I think even more thrilling is the canon of enchantment and transport you’ve partially listed and that we’re blessed with.
Tim, despite any prejudice in favor of gratuitous division, or self important wind blowing through an orifice, the field of brilliance in poetic enterprise is wide enough to accommodate all beauty and sublimity in writing composition. Please be aware that only a doctrinaire uses name-dropping, self-promotion, impulsive rapacity and sweeping generalization to support an already fragile if non-existent argument.