Poetry

I love poetry. I really do. But I hate when people insist on writing free verse because they have neither the patience nor the brains to give it any form or order. I’ve written free verse before, and am exceedingly ashamed for it. But, I did try, to give it pattern of some form or another.

Emily Dickenson wrote a lot of free verse, but I respect her’s more because she knew what she was doing and when to do it. ( Speaking of her, I want it to be known that I love her poetry, but not her…she stayed always at home and alone, with the ridiculous idea that she could find the world in books…that’s ridiculous, of course, because books are written by someone, and that someone sees things a certain way, and so they write things in a certain way, and that is not reality. Or, at least, that’s how I understand her life to be.)

Free verse too, opens things for uncontrolled speaking. The speaking can go on and on, with no consideration to the eyes and ears of the audience. Not to mention, if one is going to insist on free verse, then one ought to write prose and not poetry…it makes things far easier to understand (and for that matter, endure).

Then there is always the new idea that a teenager, having no other innocent way to vent their frustration, may turn to dramatic, Gothic, sobbing words. A dreadful crucifixion of the English language. A slow, suffering, heavy-eye-make-uped death, which, as long as it stops now and again to move to the next line of abused words, may be called, poetry.

Poetry, however, is a graceful, angelic parade of meaningful, well placed and beautiful words (that we are so blessed to have).  There are some, who don’t understand this, and therefore, have not right to play with that glorious thing: poetry.

It does sound ridiculous to say,”You must rhyme, or perish,”  but it’s not that way at all. It’s not rhyming so much as flow and order. Some people say, that having to rhyme only  limits, but that is lazy. If you are not a good enough poet to  match one word with another, than you ought not write poetry at all…well, that’s not entirely true. Some poems are very good without conventional rhyme, but still, one should try.

Actually, that isn’t the problem anyway. The problem is people writing random lines of frivolous, personal strife. Absolutely no discretion. I don’t want to know about it, and there are few others who do.

I’m done with my rants, but now you know why never to write free verse unless you have a good reason and can make it acceptable.

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