Free Verse Poetry
Part of the "Award Winning Professors Series"*W.H. Auden once said, "I love to be around words, watching them play together." Poetry, it can be argued, originates in our innate impulse to play. Conventional poetry resembles a tennis match, with regulated boundaries, scoring, and penalties. Sonnets are strict. A formal villanelle, like Dylan Thomas' "Do No Go Gentle Into That Good Night," locks handcuffs on the poet.
Rules Rule, in conventional poetry.
Play Rules, in free verse poetry.
When you read free verse (sometimes called Open Verse), think of children's exuberance on a playground. While they make rules, roles, goals, and boundaries, these change every day.
Luke says, "I'm Spiderman."
Anna insists, "You be Batman, Leif."
Leif replies, "No, I'm gonna be Hercules!"
Anna: "Hey, I wanna be Hercules."
Leif: "Annaaa, we can both be Hercules!"
Luke: "But I am Spiderman."
And so it goes, chaos. Is the play meaningless? Hardly. Play gives pleasure. Difficult play gives the greatest pleasure. Play in free verse poetry can result in sheer genius, a thundering diatribe, an overwhelming celebration of love, or a tasteless stew of sliced and diced prose. Great freedom demand great responsibility. Free verse appeals to poets because it imposes no inhibitions or restrictions on them. But when they make their own ad hoc rules, those rules must be good ones. This Permachart will provide you with tools to read, write and enjoy free verse more freely.
