What is so appealing about free verse?

Question

One of my majors is English, and I love Renaissance works - poetry, literature, philosophy. I have always appreciated the flowery language and fairly rigid structure that poetry forms took a few centuries ago. I've always felt it took incredible talent to craft a clever, thoughtful, inspiring, or beautiful piece of work inside a strict framework. Then I take a look at poems today. I compare the ones that are praised and valued to ones that aren't, and honestly, many times I can't see why one is favoured over the other. I understand that there is certain criteria, such as imagery or invoking emotion, but to do that within the constraints of structure - metre and rhyme - THAT seems like the real talent. Can anyone who appreciates free verse explain to me why they find it appealing and what makes it so? Thank-you.

Answer 1

Like the person above me said, it is appealing because it is free, no rules. Sometimes when I try to stay within a form I find myself steering away from what I truly wanted to say by needing a certain rhyme or syllable count. That's not saying I do not love classical forms, and have not tried form or rhyme. I love reading classic poetry as much as I do modern. I think it mostly lies in what the poet has to say.

Answer 2

If I may I would like to present what a famous poet said regarding poetry. This is the one constant that does not change for me.

Robert Frost: The Man and His Work - 1923

"Sometimes I have my doubts of words altogether, and I ask myself what is the place of them. They are worse than nothing unless they do something; unless they amount to deeds, as in ultimatums or battle-cries. They must be flat and final like the show-down in poker, from which there is no appeal. My definition of poetry (if I were forced to give one) would be this: words that become deeds."

"All poetry is a reproduction of the tones of actual speech."

"There are two types of relists: the one who offers a good deal of dirt with his potato to show that it is a real one, and the one who is satisfied with the potato brushed clean. I'm inclined to be the second kind. To me, the thing that art does for life is to clean it, to strip it to form"

"A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a home-sickness or a love-sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words."

add:

Whether prose or poetry... both melodies... think them with rhythm in your mind, imagine the person saying them... (no Evelyn Wood Fast Readers);  poetry should be sipped, not gulped... shall I compare Claude Debussy to Oscar Peterson... classic or jazz, structured or free flowing... beautiful in either case.

add 2: think of a cruise to Alaska and back... with everything planned... think of rafting on the river and drifting at its pace... would  not both be beautiful and enlightening?

Answer 3

I've done both.  I can do metre and rhyme, but free verse is...well, free.  You're not held back by the 'constraints of structure' to use your words.

You can do anything you want.  There are no rules.  That's the draw for me.  I like freedom.

Answer 4

I think Robert is right, along with everyone else...

the freedom writing free verse invokes is incredible...

if you always have to write within a certain structure, finding the right word might not be finding the proper word, as you're looking for a word that fits, not a word that works.

therefore, your poem can take a lot of stupid little side paths and end up being very confusing.

free verse is better, i find, because the imagery can be expressed clearly, with a free ability to interpret.

Answer 5

Dear friend,

I thought that all of what you have written was a most intelligent write, and congratulate you on such well chosen words.

The question can be asked if one is referring to paintings. Why is one apposed to the works of Picasso yet will accept the works of Dali. To the public in general both might be difficult to understand far more or less than to appreciate.

Perhaps my poem "The Poet" which is on this site and also on AuthorsDen.com (Poems by Robert Harrison) may throw some light on your question.

It is this writers opinion that free verse has greater impact on the reader than free speech does on the listener. The speaker cannot retract all that he has spoken and start again for the listener would perhaps walk away.

Set poems within a strict framework of metre and rhyme require the reader to be more exact in their reading. While free verse allows the reader some leeway to interpret the poem as THEY see fit.

My regards

Robert