Right now, WEE is something of a mirror to this blog, which makes a reference to it go well with the photo above. Gabriel and I haven’t really figured out what WEE is going to be. Right now, it’s a spot for less personal or more philosophical ramblings, especially ones where he and I disagree and can muster a debate. In other words, controversy! Woo.
I say formal poetry is inherently easier to write than free verse, and I go into my reasons for saying so here. You are hereby invited to come throw rocks.
I’ve read other people who make this claim. Stephen Fry, in his “The Ode Less Travelled” book and Mike Snider, in his blog, make a similar argument. And they do so with sincerity and skill.
I’m not convinced. I don’t think one style of poetry is harder than any other. I find poems hard to write, no matter what kind of poem I’m writing. It’s always hard to find good rhymes and to vary rhythms effectively in formal verse, just as good sonics, rhythms and linebreaks are hard to achieve in free verse.
Some formalists use this argument as a prelude to denouncing nearly all free verse as crap (I’m not suggesting you’re doing this), along the lines of “it’s so hard to do and hardly anyone can do it”. The argument is rather insincere when approached from this perspective.
And, oddly, that might be because their standards for formal verse are too low. They don’t realise that a free verse writer might equally look at a lot of formal verse and say, “Formal verse is so hard to write. And most of these people who write it don’t know what they’re doing. There’s so much puerile, formal drivel out there.”
So it cuts both ways.
But a good topic Julie/Gabriel.
Hey, Rob.
I definitely would never denounce most free verse as crap. In fact, I think my argument (and I think I’ve had this argument with Mike Snider on aapc or Erato) is that people who don’t write in forms are too impressed by a sonnet. They don’t hold formalists to the same standard. Neither do formalists. Everyone oohs and aahs over doilies (to use Rose’s term).
I do think it’s very true that rhyme and meter free the poet from having to worry if the poem will be classified as a poem, as I mentioned in the sestina thread.
There is a lot of puerile, formal drivel out there, though. What’s the old saw about most of everything being crap? 🙂