I'm a little hesitant to add my two cents here, since I'm new to the forums, but this thread touches on the type of poetical technique I have been thinking about a lot lately.
Depending on how you define it, there is no such thing as light verse - only good and bad verse. The problem with a label such as "light verse" is that people tend to assume that it means poetry lacking in intellectual weight or the proper poetic seriousness.
In practice, good light verse can present itself as a lively and intensely feeling intellect (Pope, Swift, Byron, etc.), and I would agree that there can be a mocking element to it, much like the mocking tone in many of Mozart's pieces. Sometimes poets take themselves too seriously, and they need "light verse" to bring them back down to reality, or up from the depths, depending on where they have been spending their time (yes, I'm looking at you Dante!). I’d rather think of light verse as “lively verse” myself.
One of the problems with formal poetry today is that it is in danger of being taken as light verse by everyone. It all tends to appeal to the intellect more than the passionate soul; to the conscious more than the unconscious mind. The challenge is writing formal poetry that appeals to both aspects of our minds.
By the way, this is not meant as any sort of slight on Modernism or free verse. I think poets are able to achieve different poetic affects by using different forms, and probably all poets should try their hand at crafting poems using different techniques. The truth is, though, that with the rise of the novel (and free verse, then Modernism), there has been a tendency toward seeing any rhyming, metrical poetry as a variation on a nursery rhyme.
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