Photo: Walnut Tassel by KeLP
Euterpe on the Modern Art by KeLP
Again, Alfred? Once again sit you brooding on the hill,
Mulling Chaos into Cosmos into Chaos as you will,
All-consumed with those below, the self-absorbed mortal stock?
What disaster could befall them that we in Heaven should bend to look?
This Poet Laureate has been named. . .not even for thy native land.
America hails this mountebank; this farce is not on English hands.
You thought the title had some meaning? When you held it, so it had.
Honor then was held with Honor, Honor kept to Honor led.
Honor now is but a mouthing, meant to win a little gain
From the honored or his flock, a public mouthing, loud and vain.
They proffer nothing, and in return profit nothing from the gift,
Are thanked and honored in their time for nothing until nothing's left.
Nothing left--such are poems written in the modern art,
Stripped of rhyme, stripped of meter, stripped of feeling, stripped of heart,
Prose as poetry, jumbled prose rendered in a stream-of-consciousness
Journal of the ins and outs of the writer's every orifice.
Truth and Beauty once were said to be all a poet sought.
Truth? Is it now confused with their narcissistic thought?
Is Beauty found in stillborn lines, self-inspired and self-conceived?
From Truth and Beauty has free verse conspired to set the poets free?
Enough, Alfred. Turn away. For their sake, pen a dirge.
Make it airy in its feeling, heavy in its mournful words,
That if one writing lift his gaze for an instant off himself,
I can prick his ear and sing, perhaps to stir what soul is left.
Again, Alfred? Once again sit you brooding on the hill,
Mulling Chaos into Cosmos into Chaos as you will,
All-consumed with those below, the self-absorbed mortal stock?
What disaster could befall them that we in Heaven should bend to look?
This Poet Laureate has been named. . .not even for thy native land.
America hails this mountebank; this farce is not on English hands.
You thought the title had some meaning? When you held it, so it had.
Honor then was held with Honor, Honor kept to Honor led.
Honor now is but a mouthing, meant to win a little gain
From the honored or his flock, a public mouthing, loud and vain.
They proffer nothing, and in return profit nothing from the gift,
Are thanked and honored in their time for nothing until nothing's left.
Nothing left--such are poems written in the modern art,
Stripped of rhyme, stripped of meter, stripped of feeling, stripped of heart,
Prose as poetry, jumbled prose rendered in a stream-of-consciousness
Journal of the ins and outs of the writer's every orifice.
Truth and Beauty once were said to be all a poet sought.
Truth? Is it now confused with their narcissistic thought?
Is Beauty found in stillborn lines, self-inspired and self-conceived?
From Truth and Beauty has free verse conspired to set the poets free?
Enough, Alfred. Turn away. For their sake, pen a dirge.
Make it airy in its feeling, heavy in its mournful words,
That if one writing lift his gaze for an instant off himself,
I can prick his ear and sing, perhaps to stir what soul is left.
Put another way, Free Verse is poetry without rhyme or meter. We already have a word for written material without rhyme or meter. It is "Prose". And heightened Prose meant to be spoken aloud is called "Oratory". Free Verse is Oratory.
Now, this doesn't make Free Verse unworthy of being included in Poetical collections--Louis MacNeice's Good Dream is an excellent example--but most Free Verse is an excuse for laziness, more of a stream-of-consciousness oratorical ramble than a close relative of Poetry.
Of the Poetry I read today, almost all is Free Verse, and 99 plus percent of that is basically garbage, pretentious and unimaginative. My rule of thumb for good poetry is "does it flow?" You can open Tennyson's Locksley Hall Sixty Years After at a random point and immediately be in the narrative; it flows wonderfully. Too much of modern poetry is a chore to read.
I write mostly Doggerel and not-so-serious verse, most often political observations on things in the news, but when I move to serious poetry, I refuse to abandon rhyme and meter. And my Doggerel has a tendency to political incorrectness.
Much of my verse was written many years ago, so some refers to people and incidents that are likely long forgotten or never known to the general public; still, the thought behind it should be clear.