Reanimated Lavender Granola Switchblade Nun rides again.

My Free Verse Article

Hello sweet readers. Fireblossom here. I want to use this page to talk a little bit about about my poetic love, free verse. This article expresses my views on what free verse poetry is and is not, and includes ideas to help with writing it.

Consider the wolf pack on the hunt. I think they would make fine free verse poets, and here's why. They don't run in strict military formation by any means, but neither do they just dash pell mell in all directions without purpose. They are focused and organized, but they are not show horses bound to a fixed program. They run like hell, working together as if their lives depend upon it, which they do. As I said, they would make fine free verse poets!

Let's start by talking about what free verse is NOT. First of all, free verse is NOT prose. Prose is defined in Webster's dictionary as "ordinary writing; not poetry".
So, therefore, simply breaking ordinary writing down into lines does not make it free verse, or poetry at all. 

I went to the store and 
bought eggs, 
then 
I got on the bus and went home 
where I 
made a cup of tea and 
dozed off.

Looks like a poem, doesn't it? It's not, though. It's ordinary writing. A simple test is to remove the line breaks and look at it like this:

I went to the store and bought eggs, then I got on the bus and went home where I made a cup of tea and dozed off.

It's obvious now, isn't it? NOT poetry. All right, let's try this trick again, but this time we'll turn it around. I'll start with ordinary prose:

As a child, i felt invisible to my family, which left me restless, agitated, and feeling as if I'd like to get up and scream to make them notice me. I never did, though. I stayed quiet.

That's fine as prose, but not as poetry. Now, let's see how this same feeling is conveyed by poet Gregory Corso in this section from his poem "This Was My Meal":

I turned to my father,
and he ate my birthday
I drank my milk and saw trees outrun themselves
valleys outdo themselves
and no mountain stood a chance of not walking

Desert came in the spindly hands of stepmother
I wanted to drop fire-engines from my mouth!
But in ran the moonlight and grabbed the prunes.

Mark Twain said that the difference between the right word and almost the right word, is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. The poetic image and the fresh phrase are two crucial differences between ordinary writing and free verse poetry.

Here's another example. "You're only as old as you feel" and "Do your own thing" are bumper stickers, cliches, greeting card pap. In the hands of Alta, in this excerpt from her poem "i don't know how to play, either", it sounds fresh, like this:

let's frolic, dear friend
tho we're 30 & bitter
& our faces attest to our pain.
let's dance without music
and laugh without reason;
to hell with the circus they gave us."

It can be scary to read something really well done and then wonder, "How can I do that?" One trick is to write down the thought you want to write about, in plain language, first. Then ask yourself, how can I set a match to these words and make them burn brighter? 

Another thing that distinguishes free verse, and any poetry, from ordinary writing, is the use of metaphor. Consider Charles Simic's poem "Fear":

Fear passes from man to man
Unknowing,

As one leaf passes its shudder
To another.

All at once the whole tree is trembling
And there is no sign of the wind.

He isn't talking about a tree, or leaves, or wind, not really. And yet, by use of these metaphors, he says more about how fear spreads than he could have with any prose.

Now, let's delve into the free verse toy box, where we will find gadgets and gizmos that lend themselves to free verse better than to any other form. Here is a short piece by Michael Curley, which would seem, at first glance, to be "ordinary writing." It isn't, though. In the space of four lines, he paints a portrait of a type of woman we all know and have encountered, and knocks over the pleasant facade to reveal something more. This is called "Night School Ladies".

Aging housewives pour over a textbook for one course
ruining averages, boring people with their banter,
and pictures of their grown children who are
always doing well.


Brevity, they say, is the soul of wit, and concision can be the soul of fine free verse. Here is another by Michael Curley, entitled "A Teacher's Response To Creativity":

E = MC2    PLEASE SHOW YOUR WORK!!

One line, two sentences, and yet it speaks volumes. Free verse also lends itself to the Rant, and can go on for some while without losing its power. A prime example of this is Allen Ginsberg's famous poem "Howl" from which I give you an excerpt here:

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!

"Howl" runs to some eleven pages, and far from tiring the reader, it gathers force throughout, slamming aside the complacency of the 1950s in a mighty steamroller of outrage. Got something you feel passionate about? Let it rip. Free verse can accommodate this kind of fury and emotion.

Free verse can be written in lines which are dense or spare, gentle or manic, and can take almost any form in terms of stanzas, punctuation, or premise. The thing to remember is, never let it be ordinary. Never write poetry in dull language. Keep writing and changing and experimenting and challenging yourself until you have something with the power and surprising newness of the best free verse.

I'll leave you with a section from Judy Grahn's "A Woman Is Talking To Death." I love how she packs this with so much of what really matters, and twists what we expect into something more:

4. A Mock Interrogation

Have you ever held hands with a woman?

Yes, many times--women about to deliver,women about to have breasts removed, miscarriages, women having epileptic fits, having asthsma, cancer, women having bone marrow sucked out of them by nervous or indifferent interns, women with heart condition, who were vomiting, overdosed, depressed, drunk, lonely to the point of extinction; women who had been run over, beaten up. deserted. starved. women who had been bitten by rats; and women who were happy, who were celebrating, who were dancing with me in large circles or alone, women who were climbing mountains or up and down walls, or trucks or roofs and needed a boost up, or I did; women who simply wanted to hold my hand because they liked me, some women who wanted to hold my hand because they liked me better than anyone.

Thanks for reading my article about free verse! Happy writing!





 
  

11 comments:

  1. Gotta say, I really enjoyed this, as someone who as always confined his poetry to form, rather than free verse, which eats me like a pack of wolves. This page is worth coming back to because you are successful in teaching what free verse is - and isn't. Hmm. thanks.

    Iliad Keys

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  2. Thank you so much - this was a wonderful, thoughtful piece. I fear I write lots of prose (is that the root word of prosaic?), because I loathe the artifice and self-consciousness of most Poetry (capitalization mine).

    You are a unquestionable talent and I'm so glad I found you,

    Your reader and friend
    Buddah Moskowitz

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  3. this is a fucking brilliant article and no one ...i mean NOOOOO ONE... can write free verse like you do! and i think i even understood most of what you said, which is highly unusual as i normally don't understand shit but you write good shit and i think i got it!

    you are the gawd-damn Empress of Free Verse! or the Goddess, or both!

    i'd grovel at your feet but with the vertigo i'd never be able to get up again. so consider this a pseudo-grovel, k?

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  4. So Teach, when are gonna offer a class or two?

    This was an education for me. I loved the comparison with the wolves. That's so true about most poetry, but especially about free verse.

    I loved the verse by Alta and the quote by Mark Twain and the dead man on the train or bus...oh, there's a lot of love about this lesson in free verse:~)

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  5. So timely!
    Even if I didn't find it until months after it was written. You saw my query about Eliot's Preludes, and I have been hunting free verse explanations ever since I first saw those lines.
    Yours are by far the best and most approachable. They deserve greater and more permanent exposure.

    Would you consider [well conceived] haiku the nugget of free verse?
    Without the bells and whistles of metaphor and original phrasing for which they don't have room enough?
    I reckon most of us 'know' what free verse is, until it comes to the moment when we sit down to write some. Your gently presented list of requirement should be on every new poet's home page.

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  6. Really liked this... sorry it took so long for me to get around to it.

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  7. Shay--Yeah, but to write like you, what step-by-step instructions can you give us? ;)

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  8. Written by the queen of free verse! I really loved reading this and needed it more than most! Thank you Shay! This was a wonderful article!!!!!

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  9. I just happened upon this link on your site, Shay, and I'm so glad I did! This is such a wonderful article, so inspiring and readable with excellent examples and poetry snippets to illustrate what you mean (I always learn about new poets from you, it's great!)

    I love how you explain the form, which can seem so elusive in definition, and you've done it so succinctly. (I have so often confused soliloquy with free verse - I guess a poem can have both of these elements?)

    I'm in your camp, I love free verse too, and now moreso after reading this! Thank you for sharing your knowledge <3

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