[Ed Shacklee]

"There will always be a place for bunnies to talk in rhyme, but that's not what I do." - Lois Lowry

[Andrew Frisardi]

Originally Posted by Ed Shacklee

Although these witty remarks are new to me, I've heard quite a few clever digs at free verse over the years. I wonder if anyone knows any equally clever digs made at formal poetry? I could use a good laugh directed at myself.

Best,

Ed

You praise the firm restraint with which they write:
XXXI'm with you there, of course.
They use the snaffle and the curb alright,
XXXBut where's the bloody horse?

--Roy Campbell, no mean metrical-rhyming poet himself

And he aimed this at certain South African novelists, but it clearly is multi-use.

[Ed Shacklee]

Thank you for this fine collection of tails to pin on my personal donkey. As Oliver Twist would say: More, please!

Ed



And thus the ideal target of true wit
Will in the end be he who's wielding it.

- R. Nemo Hill, from Prolegomena to an Essay on Satire

[Michael Juster]

I am against free verse.

Editors should pay BY THE LINE!!!

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

For me, the ridiculous thing in the Chesterton quote is the belief that verse and meter are synonymous.

They are not. They often correspond in metrical poetry, but they are not the same thing.

For me, verse is all about turning: turning the idea, the argument, a focus during the progression of lines, images, metaphors, etc.

Meter is merely the arrangement of stress.

I have—yes I have—read many poems on the Met board that were obviously quite metrical, even nice to read, that did not seem to me to be good verse. This is especially true when enjambments are used willy-nilly, seemingly without a care beyond whether enough beats are in a line and the right rhyme falls in the right place.

And of course I've read plenty of free verse on the Non-met boards that did not seem like good verse or any kind of verse at all.*

*Edit: I wanted to add that I'd say that a poem, or poetry, is also distinct for me from both meter and verse.