Jan 2017
Intro
Words in play without meter or rhyme
Is poetry without respect for sounds or time
Like a military bugler playing his morning song
But jazzing it up, which for the morning sounds wrong.
1
Poems short of prose serve to play the edge
In which the abstract thought can its verses wedge
Poetry's an art - that can't be denied
But when ripped apart, leaves readers in divide.
On one hand we have free verse with all its liberties
Its flows, like ocean waves, give in to subtleties
The other hand holds form where order and beauty lie
Its sound there calms the mind and guides the reading eye.
Well, how can art transcend if it's to be confined?
Ask the poor man painting, what keeps his strokes refined.
Ask him what is richer: materials or mind-
How he affords true art: in color or design.
And could he paint with passion if he were also blind?
To what limit does art flow, that could liberty unwind??
2
If sentences were laid and in stanzas fitted to form,
The simplest thought now sparks, the layman poet is norm -
-A hand that holds a pen.. its wondrous poem adored
Ha! That relic sonnet lost 'cause the modern reader's bored.
The talentless recites: his poetry: my rage..
Where then is the poem, in the words or on the page?
I'll credit that the form of poetry can change:
Like ocean waves on shores where waters rearrange
And subtleties lay washed whence art can have a fad
And for a moment last despite what I think bad.
Words without art, conveyed for art-less brains
The verse that freely speaks as the older school disdains..
3
But rhyming, timing schemes of ancient preference
What novelty they yield in these times of rhyme suspense....
Just the thought of it and one can hear a beaten drum,
A percussive, tired sound for ears tired and numb
They're artifacts of effort that the ancients then called art
Confined to rhyme and metered verse, the caged poems impart-
Shakespeare, Wilmot, Behn, these are but forgotten names
A pantheon of "poets" whose works of words too tame
Did not taste the "modernness" that free verse giveth to thee...
The ghosts of poems past singing their songs but never free.
How lucky for us rebel writers, we laugh at silly rules!
Rule-less, ruthless poems we write with rhyme nor time as tools!
Words in play without meter or rhyme
Is poetry without respect for sounds or time
Like a military bugler playing his morning song
But jazzing it up, which for the morning sounds wrong.
1
Poems short of prose serve to play the edge
In which the abstract thought can its verses wedge
Poetry's an art - that can't be denied
But when ripped apart, leaves readers in divide.
On one hand we have free verse with all its liberties
Its flows, like ocean waves, give in to subtleties
The other hand holds form where order and beauty lie
Its sound there calms the mind and guides the reading eye.
Well, how can art transcend if it's to be confined?
Ask the poor man painting, what keeps his strokes refined.
Ask him what is richer: materials or mind-
How he affords true art: in color or design.
And could he paint with passion if he were also blind?
To what limit does art flow, that could liberty unwind??
2
If sentences were laid and in stanzas fitted to form,
The simplest thought now sparks, the layman poet is norm -
-A hand that holds a pen.. its wondrous poem adored
Ha! That relic sonnet lost 'cause the modern reader's bored.
The talentless recites: his poetry: my rage..
Where then is the poem, in the words or on the page?
I'll credit that the form of poetry can change:
Like ocean waves on shores where waters rearrange
And subtleties lay washed whence art can have a fad
And for a moment last despite what I think bad.
Words without art, conveyed for art-less brains
The verse that freely speaks as the older school disdains..
3
But rhyming, timing schemes of ancient preference
What novelty they yield in these times of rhyme suspense....
Just the thought of it and one can hear a beaten drum,
A percussive, tired sound for ears tired and numb
They're artifacts of effort that the ancients then called art
Confined to rhyme and metered verse, the caged poems impart-
Shakespeare, Wilmot, Behn, these are but forgotten names
A pantheon of "poets" whose works of words too tame
Did not taste the "modernness" that free verse giveth to thee...
The ghosts of poems past singing their songs but never free.
How lucky for us rebel writers, we laugh at silly rules!
Rule-less, ruthless poems we write with rhyme nor time as tools!
I prefer traditional metered and rhyming poetry. I like the challenge of trying to write it.
