How I feel about free verse poetry.
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,477
    (This is not related to anything having to do with the forum, excepting for the fact that I know some people around here will enjoy it.)
    ------------------------------------------------------------

    Free verse poetry.
    I
    Find hard to take seriously
    the idea that breaking thoughts into
    unrhymed
    unmetered
    unmeasured and untested
    lines of profundity
    -scare quotes - air quotes -
    makes those thoughts
    those words
    those random jiberjaberings
    more.
    More lucid.
    More profound.
    More meaningful.
    Most of all
    more artful.

    There is art and music
    in the language of prose
    and rhythm that rises
    (as everyone knows).

    But too many poets
    (I loosely so call)
    just write down some words
    and don't edit at all.

    Don't make the words sing,
    don't make the tongue dance-
    which language will do
    if just given a chance.

    If your words be not measured
    so what of your thoughts?
    We all have opinions
    (myself? I have lots!)

    But one or another one's
    thoughts are equivalent
    in value, in worth-
    which leaves me ambivalent

    How can I know
    that your thoughts are worth hearing,
    if my heart is not jumping,
    my eyes never tearing?

    The music of God
    is in all living things
    and a rational, beautiful thought?
    Well- it sings!

    It sings whether rhyming
    it sings whether prose
    Or silent, or painted,
    or danced on your toes.

    But do not expect me
    to care for your "poem"
    Those salads of wordles,
    I don't want to know 'em.

    I'm not saying free verse
    is always so awful
    but it seems the untalented
    spew it by jaw-full.

    So go and relearn
    the old forms of the past
    then come back and make us
    some song that will last.

    Or else don't inflict us
    insisting "it's art"
    (The sixties are over.
    I don't give a fart!)

    And when you have poemed
    or danced or composed
    when you haved painted
    or sculpted, or prosed

    some object of beauty
    instrinsic of worth
    that needs no explaining
    of context of birth

    please, then, let us see it
    or hear or whate'er-
    I'll want to enjoy it,
    be glad it is there.

    We need more creation
    by artists- by you!
    we need something diff'rent
    we need something new.

    But we don't need the
    relativistic assertion
    champeened by the thugs
    of collegiate coercion

    that art is whatever you
    want it to be.
    (This is patently stupid.)
    A child can see

    that some things are better
    and some things are worse.
    And some things don't rise
    to the level of "verse."

    No you don't have to rhyme,
    And it's not like there's rules
    but the language of English
    has so many tools

    to bring out the beauty
    of all that you say
    to focus the mind
    in an orderly way

    or even to let
    the chaotic take flight
    if that is your goal,
    then that is your right.

    All I'm saying is
    random profundity's lame,
    it all is so shallow,
    it all seems the same.

    So why should I care
    what you bothered to type
    if it bears an uncanny
    resemblance to tripe?

    At least make me want to
    indulge for a bit
    in the thoughts you have thunk
    and the writes you have writ.

    Attract me, romance me,
    oh woo me and then-
    I will come, I will read you
    again and again.

    For the road to the mind
    and the soul is the heart.
    If that's where you would end,
    this is where you must start.
    Thanked by 2Heath CHGiffen
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Adam,

    Just for curiosity's sake, how would you respond if someone edited it, sent it to a hymnal company, and put (alt.) in the credits?
    Thanked by 2Earl_Grey TheUbiquitous
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,477
    I would think that is a very weird hymnal.
    Thanked by 1Heath
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,477
    To answer your question more completely:


    /**********
    *
    * AGAINST FREE VERSE
    *
    * @author: Adam Michael Wood || https://github.com/adammichaelwood || adam.michael.wood@gmail.com
    * @copyright: ©2013 Adam Michael Wood
    *
    * @license: Creative Commons: Attribution, Share-Alike || CC BY-SA 3.0 || http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
    *
    * @package: Adam's Writing || https://github.com/adammichaelwood/adam.michael.wood_writing
    * @subpackage: Poems
    *
    *
    **********/


    https://github.com/adammichaelwood/adam.michael.wood_writing/blob/master/poems/against-free-verse

    I realize that other creators feel differently but as for me- the things I care about in relation to my creative output are, in order of importance:
    1. They are used. (This means sung, read, enjoyed, shared, whatever- as appropriate to the medium).
    2. They are as good as possible. (Which often means allowing other people to "fix" them.)
    3. I get recognition for whatever it was that I did.

    The license under which I release all work helps with (1) and (2), and my now public GitHub repo helps with (3), because there is a provable first instance that cannot be faked.

    You'll notice "getting paid" is not on my short list. Neither is "protecting the integrity of my artistic creation."
  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    Beautiful, Adam. I printed it out for my children to meditate upon.

    BTW, whenever I see your name I always think of this wonderful children's book, and I don't think it's a coincidence, considering you are a modern-day minstrel, if there ever was one:

    image
    Thanked by 1Adam Wood
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,477
    THANKS! You are very kind.
  • MHIMHI
    Posts: 324
    How can I know
    that your thoughts are worth hearing,
    if my heart is not jumping,
    my eyes never tearing?


    This is a wonderful stanza with a profound message.

    Instead of "Against Free Verse" you could call it "In Defense of New Formalism."
    Thanked by 1Adam Wood
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,477
    MHI-
    THANKS!

    The little bit of your work I've gotten to see here makes compliments from you very meaningful.

    If you liked this, check out my other poems:
    https://github.com/adammichaelwood/adam.michael.wood_writing/tree/master/poems

    (There's a few in there I think you'll really like.)

    ---

    New Formalism


    Had to Google...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Formalism

    I'm part of a movement, I just didn't know it.
    (Not bad for an amateur, humorist poet!)

  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Might I post "Gregorian Praise to Our God" or "A Blazing Place", or "Yoo-hoo!" or "Be not afraid", or "Likea shepherd he feeds his flock to gathering wolves..."?
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    As to "weird hymnal" -- have you no sense of adventure or the needs of a modern church community? (do I mean cur's community?)
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,477
    um.... I'm not sure what you're getting at here....
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,477
    (A more thoughtful and developed response to cgz's initial question.)
    ----------------------------------------------------------

    There are arguments - some good, some bad - against my position on Intellectual Property.

    But the one I find the most ridiculous is this one:
    "Yeah, well- how would you feel if I copied/changed/sold/edited/altered/mangled YOUR stuff?"

    Short answer: Great. I'd be thrilled.

    Long answer:

    1. The thing I want most for my work is that it be shared/used/enjoyed by people. If you do any of the things above, the result is likely going to be in line with my desire.

    2. The thing I want second most for my work is that it be as good as possible. Giving other people the freedom to alter/edit/mangle it means that I have an endless supply of possible improvement. And since we're talking about information (not, say, a car or a painting), no one's editing or mangling can ever destroy the original.

    3. The thing I want third most of all for my work is that people know it was mine, so that if they like it, they can tell me about it, or think I'm cool, or invite me to dinner parties and such. While Free Licensing presents the vague possibility that someone would illicitly attach their own name to my work, the (virtually) indestructible archive that is the internet (along with my new habit of GitHubbing my output) ensures (as much as anything can) that credit will always be traceable back to me.

    4. Fascinating threat. But the fact that you haven't, and aren't likely to, and neither has any one else, makes me think that those potential problems aren't that much to be concerned about.

    5. There are times when, for one reason or another, I prefer that people do not edit or alter my texts without asking first. I do not change the legal requirements of the license, though. I simply attach a note that expresses my wishes. Anyone who would trample on my expressed wish here (just because they legally can do so) is an uncivilized brute, and worth neither my energy (to think about) nor my tax dollars (to prosecute).

    6. I am the descendant of an endless parade of humanity, the product of a culture that stretches back to before the dawn of known history. My education has been guided and directed by countless individuals and cultural institutions, and included literary and artistic material from every inhabited continent. My mind and my soul are the creations of God (or else, if not God, the unimaginable workings of chance and evolution), and the inspiration I feel at any given moment is likewise of Divine (or mysterious) origin. Knowing this, how can I rightly believe that a few lines of poetry or a handful of notes strung together are somehow not just mine, but mine alone?

    7. Even if my thinking on all those matters were different, I would not wish for my own desires and preferences to be enshrined by government mandate, interpreted by government courts, or enforced by government weapons.
    Thanked by 1barreltone
  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    Even if my thinking on all those matters were different, I would not wish for my own desires and preferences to be enshrined by government mandate, interpreted by government courts, or enforced by government weapons.


    Spoken like a true American. Hoo-rah!
  • MarkThompson
    Posts: 768
    Might I post "Gregorian Praise to Our God" or "A Blazing Place", or "Yoo-hoo!" or "Be not afraid", or "Likea shepherd he feeds his flock to gathering wolves..."?

    If you are actually parodying the original work, then you do not need permission at all; parody constitutes fair use under copyright law (precisely because copyright holders would never be expected to give permission for a mockery of their own work).
    Thanked by 1Adam Wood
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Adam, Mark,

    The parodies already exist; yes, I wrote them.
    Some of them are available because Dr. Philip Blosser, who operates the blog "Pertinacious Papist" posted them some years ago.

Add a Comment