Dear Sen. Bruce Caswell,
I have noticed an unfortunate trend in modern poetry toward what people call “free verse”: Poetry that is written without meter. I would like to discuss why I find this trend disturbing and what I hope you and others will do about it.
To begin, the term “free verse” is in itself a contradiction. The Oxford English Dictionary defines verse thusly: “Metrical composition, form, or structure; language or literary work written or spoken in metre; poetry, esp. with reference to metrical form. Opposed to prose.” Therefore, verse can never be “free” of meter, because meter is an essential part of what makes it verse.
But why is meter important? First, poetry is meant to sound beautiful. Words and their cadences should resemble music. And what would music be without a time signature? In general, creating something beautiful and artistic requires structure. In the case of a poem, meter provides a musical framework through which we can appreciate the beauty of the words.
Free verse can be safer to write. No need to bother with structure or worry about an embarrassingly bad rhyme; you can just spew your feelings onto paper, insert arbitrary line breaks in the middle of sentences, and you are done. While the unfiltered nature of free verse may seem conducive to self-expression, the very phrase “self-expression” is antithetical to art. A poem should be a gift to the reader, only indirectly about the artist.
C.S. Lewis once wrote the following to a would-be free verse poet: “After you have been writing strict, rhyming verse for about 10 years it will be time to venture on the free sort. At present it only encourages you to write prose not so good as your ordinary prose and type it like verse.” Not all free verse is what Lewis described, but much is.
And so, Senator, I humbly ask that you propose a bill to the Michigan State Senate making free verse poetry a capital crime. We can hope other states follow suit.
This would ensure that only those willing to risk their lives for their poetry would publish free verse. Such is the mark of a genuine artist.
I say this because there is a third reason to write free verse. Perhaps you, like T.S. Eliot in his better works, prefer the format because you enjoy the challenge of giving a poem structure without the aid of regular meter. Some of Eliot’s poems sound as musical as those of a Keats or Frost. They have a cadence absent from the works of William Carlos Williams (another free verse poet), even including frequent rhymes. Eliot was steeped in literature, including much metered poetry. Though he may be accused of elitism, he wrote as an insider, having come to love poetry of the metered sort before attempting to write free verse. But even Eliot wrote some “poetry” that had little meaning and less structure. He could have improved his free verse by writing more of his own verse poetry.
This is what I would ask of anyone else reading this letter. Bills take a long time to get through the state legislature, so this is merely a request. Please consider reading, then writing poetry in meter for several years before attempting free verse. Perhaps you could even make it rhyme. Don’t be afraid to fail; failure is part of creativity. Write stilted meter and embarrassingly bad rhymes for a few years, then beautiful rhymes and flowing meter. Submit your best to the Tower Light, which needs more structured poetry. If you are an editor of the Tower Light, I do not ask that you reject all free verse on principle, but that you prize structure and rhythm, saying “ : , no” to esoteric self-expression.
There is such a thing as a decent free verse poem, perhaps even a beautiful one. But before you try to write it, try meter. You will enter a tradition at least as old as Homer. You will learn to make your work more beautiful. And if I get my way, it could have the minor additional benefit of saving your life.
[mostly] Sincerely,
Daniel Slonim
