Blessed Free Verse: The Biggest Loophole
*Free Verse: poetic verse that follows no fixed rhythmic or metrical pattern
One of the few artforms that’s managed, maybe only through self-promotion of the so-called intellectual “elite,” to uphold a genuine sense of untouchability is poetry. There have been bad boys, sure–Robert Frost, Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams…–who’ve messed with the form and made it their own, in a lot of cases demystifying and humanizing it. But still, even today poetry remains the only medium I can think of that people are hesitant to unapologetically trash. People don’t like a movie, it’s because it’s horrible. A band, because it’s talentless. But a poem? Well…maybe it’s just not for them.
You ask me, the reason for all this is the bunk misconception that poetry is this highly refined, almost celestial form, measured in syllabics and strict rhyme and whatever else. And yeah, sometimes that can be true, but in all of it there’s this huge exception, this clause in the contract that says, “Ok, everything I just taught you–forget it. Now instead, do whatever the hell you want”: and that’s free verse. Free verse says you don’t have to rhyme or count syllables. You don’t have to have the same amount of lines in each stanza. You can write how you speak and write about anything, write dialogue if you want to, indent lines in the middle of stanzas, float words in the middle of the page. This is creativity, dammit! It expresses itself however it expresses itself. This is where the term “poetic license” was born.
But they didn’t focus too much on that in grade school.
Free verse was one of the things that made me an English major. Nothing has to have rules — this is a pretty powerful revelation. And once it happens to you, you start worrying more about actually writing and less about fitting into some structure of what you think writing is supposed to be. You start exploring deeper the things you care about and why you care about them, thinking about the things you think about, fleshing out your memories and sense of humor, all the passing thoughts that somehow seem like more than just thoughts when they shuffle by. Say what you want to say, how you want to say it. We’re all poets, each trying to find our voice in prose we tune to sound like music.
You can get away with pretty much anything free-forming (trust me), and after awhile, it’ll stop feeling like you’re “getting away” with stuff and more like you’re making it, pulling it out and articulating it from the bottom of wherever emotions come from. Which can be as scary as it can be awesome. And eye-opening. And even sometimes fun.
This one’s from January 27th of this year. It’s called “Mr Frederick.”
Mr Frederick
They said he’d make you stay
after class
to shine his bald head
if you were bad. It was grade
school, back when we’d run
from girls and play
the recorder under bright fluorescents.
Ta ta tee-tee ta, he’d sing, guiding
our noise with his. And he taught us
how to spell “Connecticut.”
“Connect I cut,” he told us, and made
it easy.
He didn’t have a first name, a wife,
a family, or a favorite
Beatles album. But every time
I spell Connecticut, I break
it up, sound it out, and smirk,
remembering those days when I blew wildly
into that stupid recorder.
This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 9:15 pm and is filed under poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Mike December 21st, 2009 at 11:30 am
I won’t let you take me down from my “poetic rebel without a cause” high horse, Rodney!
But I know what you mean. Iambic pentameter just sounds good. Sounds *right*. So most of what I do does end up falling into that general area. But I like the idea of starting a piece without any preconceptions of what it will “be,” meter, stanza length, whatever. So that beginning pre-writing period, I guess, is what I’m talking about.
I probably am a formalist, though. Aimee used to always call me a romantic with my nonfiction pieces even though I’d try to play all coy and cynical. My talk is more righteous than my walk.