This poet’s question pesters me:
Is free verse really poetry?
Not in the view of Robert Frost
Who saw scant point when form was lost
For hopeful poets, form is hard
And free verse helps them play the bard
Unstructured lines, they dish up firstBut Frost liked poems served well-versed
Free verse’s goal, he didn’t get
Like playing tennis with no net
The imagery may be sublime
But short on stanza, meter, rhyme
It’s puzzling prose to great degreeAnd shouldn’t pose as poetry
Walt Whitman had a different mindAs Old World styles he “Leaves” behindBe liberated, he’d insist
This free-from-rules apologist
Here Robert Frost would disagree
Rules aren’t the foe of poetryThe poet’s road Frost took made senseAnd that made all the differenceI think he’d second those who’ve said:Call free verse “prosetry” instead.
Jerry Harris
Durango
