[Nick McRae]

I wanted to start with a quick thanks for all of the assistance I've gotten on previous threads.

With this one I'm interested in getting some names you'd recommend along the lines of non-metrical poetry. Preferably poets who've been active in the past few decades, but older stuff is fine as well.

I don't think anything I include will be a big revelation for anyone, but the main names I've looked at to date:

- Leonard Cohen
- Federico Lorca
- George Seferis
- Wisława Szymborska
- Czesław Miłosz
- Rilke
- Georg Trakl
- Irving Layton

Among the above I know Cohen the best, the rest I've only touched on a little.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Roger Slater]

I wouldn't call Rilke non-metrical, and Lorca also frequently writes metrical.

Off the top of my head, Alan Dugan is one of my favorites. His poem Funeral Oration for a Mouse is one of the best poems I know, and it's not metrical. Stanley Kunitz writes both metrical and non-metrical, and his poem The Portrait is another top favorite of mine. Philip Levine (who started as a metrical poet) also has some very fine non-metrical poems, though it takes some digging to find them among his overproduction. James Tate also has some very fine poems lurking among a body of lesser poems.

[W T Clark]

Shane Mc'crae, Ishion Hutchinson, Geofrey Hill, Alice Oswald, Jay Wright, Toby Martinez, Clarice Lispector, Anne Carson, Osip Mandelstam.
I've intentionally not drawn a difference between those who use metre and those who don't: it seem to me rather boring to worry about the distinguishing of rhythm: recently I can't even be bothered to distinguish between poems and novels: there is something much more strange beneath all this conservative artificiality: language which is really about living. Although, if you do want categories: Rilke is almost completely metrical in his German.

[Nick McRae]

Thanks for the comments on Rilke, I was listing out poets I'd read and forgot to consider if all were actually non-met.

I haven't read too much of him, just the Duino Elegies and New Poems. My memory failed me as my impression of the latter was it being non-met. It may have been the translation.

Similar thing with Lorca as well, I've only read him briefly and it's been a few years.

[Chris O'Carroll]

Leonard Cohen strikes me as very much a metrical poet.

Non- (or primarily non-) metrical poets I admire include Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux, Martin Espada, Marge Piercy, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. E.E. Cummings is masterful in both rhyme/meter and free verse.

[Nick McRae]

Originally Posted by Chris O'Carroll

Leonard Cohen strikes me as very much a metrical poet.

Non- (or primarily non-) metrical poets I admire include Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux, Martin Espada, Marge Piercy, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. E.E. Cummings is masterful in both rhyme/meter and free verse.

What makes you say that re: Cohen? (I'm always interested in chatting about him)

His earlier stuff is definitely more traditional though I haven't analyzed the meter. Mid-career seems more a mix of avante-garde, minimalism, sometimes prose-like. Meter came back in his later work but it's a bit of both.

He was always well versed in it but the poetry that reached a bookstore was often non-met.

[John Riley]

It’s odd to come here and ask for suggestions of non-met poets as though they’re shy birds. I’m sure you’ve heard of T. S. Eliot? William Carlos Williams? Ezra Pound? There are poets who wrote in both with meter and without meter: Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, John Berryman. If this sounds like a syllabus for a survey course in 20th century American Lit that’s the point. Maybe slip Loraine Niedecker in or Hilda Doolittle (HD.) The closer you come to the present day the list explodes. Just start reading. You don’t need a list. Maybe buy a couple of Norton Anthologies to get started.

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by W T Clark

… if you do want categories: Rilke is almost completely metrical in his German.

As is Mandelstam in his Russian—only one foray into free verse that I know of—but I get what you’re saying about not wanting to draw a distinction.

[Nick McRae]

Originally Posted by Carl Copeland

As is Mandelstam in his Russian—only one foray into free verse that I know of—but I get what you’re saying about not wanting to draw a distinction.

My thinking with singling out non-met is an interest in seeing what people are doing with that style of poetry.

This forum's definitely given me an appreciation for metrical, and I hope to write in it when life finally gives me a minute. But to date I'm mainly a non-met poet so that's where the brunt of my interest is.

[Chris O'Carroll]

I knew the songs on some of Cohen's albums before I ever acquired any of his books. So I've always tended to think of him as a rhyme and meter guy. But I took The Spice Box of Earth off the shelf today, and I find that you're right, the majority of poems in that collection are non-metrical. So thanks for the wake-up call.