Paul Abbott
No 'vers' is 'libre'...
"freedom is only true freedom if it appears against the background of an artificial limitation"
T S Eliot
I found it interesting, recently, to read the anthologies of Foyle young poets collected over the last few years - genuinely interesting, and often quite enjoyable. What was immediately striking about the collections was how few of the poems had been crafted within an obvious phonetic or rhythmical structure. Entirely independently of each other, so many young poets rejected structure and simple poetic techniques altogether. While many of the poems are "chock-full of love, crammed with bright / Thoughts, names, rhymes" and so on, the presentation and organisation of the words appear so arbitrary that I can't help feeling that the ideas and images and emotions they describe share this sense of carelessness, and disorganisation.
This is hideously unfair, as I cannot pretend to understand from a text alone the reasons for, and process of, its creation. However, because the forms of so many of the poems seem to often bear little relation to the subjects, or even words, that they contain, they present a fractured appearance to the reader. Poetry that says one thing, but is structured to say another. This, of course, could be precisely the effect that many of the poets wished to create, and I am willing to accept that I may have missed structures in some poems on account of their subtlety, but it seems strange that so many should wish to do so.
I am not speaking against free verse as being necessarily inferior to other forms, and, certainly, it is not a bad thing in itself. I am just surprised at its almost universal popularity, even where the subject matter quite clearly suits a different approach. Eliot tells us that "The most interesting verse which has yet been written in our language has been done either by taking a simple form, like the iambic pentameter, and constantly withdrawing from it, or taking no form at all, and constantly approximating to a very simple one. It is this contrast between fixity and flux, this unperceived evasion of monotony, which is the very life of verse... freedom is only true freedom if it appears against the background of an artificial limitation."
Ezra Pound is less kind, and simply tells us "No 'vers' is 'libre' to the man who wants to do a good job"!
It may be that as young poets we simply need to spend more time on crafting our poetry, and put a concentrated effort into forming a more careful creative process. This suggestion may well lead to fewer poems being written. But that is not necessarily a bad thing either.
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