IS FREE VERSE, KILLING POETRY ?

"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—

Only this and nothing more.”

(The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe)

The crux of the problem in poetry today is the free verse structure. It has enabled everyone to write. There are practically no rules to follow. One simply has to write down sentences and string them together.

Others are deliberately using bigger words to seem like they actually have something to say.

The point is poetry with rhyme is difficult to master, it’s more difficult when you are just not stringing words together. But free verse has removed all difficulties and if there are no difficulties there is no point. Anybody can do it.

Look at some good poetry. The Raven by Poe, one of the most read poems ever. The underlying composition is almost mathematically accurate. The reason the poem is so popular is because it rhymes , it sounds so good to ears.once you start reading it you cannot stop yourself. Like modern day advertisement jingles, the reason they are so catchy, that they embed themselves in to our memory that try as hard as we can we can never remove them. For example the energic candy commercial. “Ik makhloq ajeeb o ghareeb urn tishtri main ai”. The single sentence triggers the whole song.

Rhyme matters. There is a lot of history behind it. I already told you about Poe. How about Shakespeare , Homer ? the giants . Their sonnets, epics, all of them rhyme. Besides that they sound good, rhymes were also necessary. For example below is a passage from one of Shakespeare sonnets.

“Nay if you read this verse,

Remember not the hand that writ it,

For I love you so,

For I in your sweet thoughts would be forgotten,

If thinking on me then should make you woe.”

See how easy it is to remember. I can recall the whole thing.

In Homer’s day, epics were told orally. Rhyme made it easier to remember 500 verses long epics, rhyme also gave the performer the ability to pause and recall and sometimes improvise. Without rhyme poetry just wouldn’t have survived.

Which leads me to the question why are people avoiding rhyme ? It has been avoided so much it is practically dying now. My question is what’s the difference between a prose sentence , and a sentence in poem which is not rhyming ? The answer: no difference at all. One can lift sentences from prose then present them as a free verse poem.

It has been said that all literature’s point is to guide, but poetry pleases while it guides. Without rhyme there is barely any pleasure left.

I request all the new writers please think about it. Please do the difficult thing. It will help you grow as a writer. The genre is dying. We owe it to Homer, to Shakespeare, to Poe and all the greats in whom footsteps we follow. We cannot shirk from our responsibility. We cannot always do the easy thing.

I want you to read The Raven, if you haven’t already and compare it with any free verse piece and ask yourself which one will you give to a child. ask yourself which one will please a child more ? then ask yourself what are you adding to literature ? what do you want to leave behind ?

I leave you with another passage from Poe's The Raven.

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—

Nameless here for evermore."