Richard, your remarks about free verse versus metrical verse are quite interesting and (I think) even handed.
You wrote "that swirl of change [in fee verse]can be very expressive, but expressive of something very different from what metrical verse expresses."
I'm not sure, but I assume you mean to be speaking about form rather than substance. In terms of the actual content of a poem, its arguments, metaphors, images, etc., I'd say that formal verse and free verse (for the most part) can express pretty much the same range of thoughts and emotions. The manner of expression may be very different, but the actual meaning that gets expressed can be very similar.
If we valued expression only in terms of "the more music, the better," then we'd probably have to decide that fine songs are superior even to metrical verse for their expressive qualities. (I'm not saying that you said "the more music, the better," by the way. I'm speaking generally). And in some limited ways we would be right. Many people (myself included) find that songs more reliably produce a visceral reaction and are more automatically committed to memory than even formal poetry. Almost everyone can recognize countless hundreds of songs on the radio and sing along to a certain extent, even songs they don't care for or enjoy.
So any attempt (not by you, but by others) to argue that metrical verse is superior to free verse because it is more "musical" would fall into a trap that would force them to concede that just about any halfway decent song is superior to just about any formal verse.
It seems to me that poems need "just enough" music, not a maximum amount of music, and that we often come across free verse poems that manage to create sufficient music to accompany their substance and create a profound poetic experience.
There's nothing particularly reactionary or conservative about preferring to write metrical verse rather than free verse, any more than it's reactionary or conservative to try to express oneself with music and song. What I do think of as reactionary and conservative, however, is the attitude that some people have that free verse is some kind of innately inferior endeavor produced by bad ears that cannot hear or appreciate the beauty of meter. I think it's the people who take this point of view who are the ones with the ears that need training.
|