Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Moonan
(Put the guns away)
All legitimate poetry is metrical, in my ear. Poetry we call “free verse” is simply improvised metric poetry. Like jazz, I think.
But poetry, like all art, is in the eye of the beholder. It’s a judgment call. Though if it doesn't have a cadence, a rhythm to it, I don't care for it.
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I've heard it argued that language itself is metrical, and since we speak with stressed and unstressed syllables, that might be true, if you really want to stretch it that far. I think what most mean by metrical poetry is that wherein the stressed and unstressed syllables are arranged in recognizable and repeated patterns. Some poems that are "metrical" but devoid of repeated patterns I classify as free verse, more or less, like much of the work of Walt Whitman, whose training in tight form never left him entirely, as much as he tried to shake it off. James Dickey writes in highly cadenced lines and patterned forms, but he called formalism "suspect."
Just curious, but what do you mean by
(Put the guns away) ?
I was going to cite that one, Andrew. Pure image, and good use of white space and line breaks.