This ain't your daddy's old-timey-rhymey poetry

Why I Write Free Verse Poems

 Traditional Schools of Poetry

Remember high school English? We read a lot of poetry. It was usually served in two flavors: rhyming lines and blank verses. Robert Frost is a famous author of rhyming poetry; William Shakespeare is the legendary guru of the set metrical patterns of blank verse. 

Poetry Today

 The formal poetic patterns of the past (e.g., sonnet, haiku, limericks, as well rhymed and unrhymed blank verse) have—for the most part—given way to free verse poetry. It has no set rules. Poets are free to try anything that makes sense to them from simple, unpretentious verses to complex, multi-dimensional stanzas . It is by its nature subjective, often experimental, occasionally incomprehensible. 

Two Schools of Free Verse Poetry

In recent decades, avant-garde poetry has come to dominate literary forums and even popular magazines, like The New Yorker. Followers of this format belong to New York and Language Schools of Poetry. 

Even so, there are other practitioners of Free-Verse Poetry who value clear communication, vivid imagery, and plain talk. For example, think of the poetry of former U.S. Poet Laureate, Billy Collins. Here in Vermont, such writers are sometimes known as members of  the Green Mountain School of Poetry. 

THE TWO SCHOOLS OF POETRY:

1 - New York & Language Schools of Poetry

These schools are the home of Postmodern poetry. Its verses are often characterized by intricate allusions, cryptic symbolism and themes of alienation and absurdity. The Poetry Foundation says critics generally describe Modelist poetry as: “Difficult, various, and complex.”

Here’s an example: 

Now these hurt visitors submit, 
learning in the brilliant retinue
to be helpless by refusal... 

—J. H. Prynne, “Lend a Hand in Bands Around the Throat”

And another: 

For brief scratches, omits,
lays away the oars (hours).
Flagrant immersion besets all 
the best boats. Hands, hearts
don't slip, solidly 
(sadly) departs. 

—Charles Bernstein's "Lift Plow Plates”

While this School of Poetry is well received, even admired, in literary circles, it is not popularly read. Several sources estimate that just 12% of us read poetry. Says James Fallon, an early reviewer of Mianus Village:

“As a scientist I have never understood [contemporary] poetry.”

Billy Collins says this about modernist poetry: “Readers should enjoy poetry instead of overanalyzing it in an attempt to find its meaning.” 

2 - Green Mountain School of Free-Verse Stories 

Outwardly simple, always direct, and easily readable, verses in this school might more accurately be dubbed stories rather than poems. Free-verse stories are structured to communicate meaning through sounds, vivid images, line breaks, and more. They are written so today's readers can consume them fast and painlessly.

 Here’s an example of text in the Green Mountain School from my free-verse story, “7-Years Old and Doomed” in Mianus Village. The narrator tells us how he feels after breaking his arm in a fall off a wall: 

 I bit my lip until it bled,

sure I was ruined—

a one-armed bag of woe,

a beggar on the sidewalk

of life rattling a cup

for small change.

Another example from David Huddle’s book Paper Boy. The narrator describes what he sees and hears after Sunday night church services. 

After vespers our parents

talked in soft

murmurs, the air

full of cricket

and frog noises,

summer winds,

and the smell of

rain coming

later.

And one more from my former UVM professor, the late T. Alan Broughton. In Man on the Moon, he tells the story of an old man jilted on a first date with a young woman: 

…and when I got to my car I sat there

for a while with my keys clutched in my hand

and I started to cry just a hungry old man

and all the way home I said out loud

Peter you old fool you old fool Peter.

Qualities of Free Verse Poetry

Free verse poens always lift my spirits and settle my mind. I love the rhythmic cadence that closely follows the natural speech patterns of everyday people. It sounds just like the way we think and talk. To paraphrase Paul McCartney, each verse should “like one another.” Music to the ear. Never forced or lame. Here’s an example from one of Lennon and McCartney’s favorite songs: Here, There and Everywhere:

To lead a better life, I need my love to be here
Here, making each day of the year
Changing my life with a wave of her hand
Nobody can deny that there's something there…

Along the way, the author strives to find vivid imagery, evocative words, and unexpected figures of speech. The combination of verses that conjure up pictures in one’s mind’s eye are chosen to give the poem a “painterly” feeling. The goal is to make the reader see something being described—as if it were physically present.

 Thoughts from a Former Connecticut Poet Laureate on Mianus Village

My publisher, Rennie McQuilkin at Antrim House Books describes Mianus Village in this way:  

 The poems [stories] in this book are vigorous and compelling,

always comprehensible but never simplistic.

They tell a story that pulls the reader forward

at breakneck speed.

They are full of wit and graphic detail.

 A Trip Down Memory Lane

 By the time you finish Mianus Village, I trust you will have seen and felt what it was like to grow up as a Baby Boomer. In your mind’s eye, you will have recorded 36 colorful snapshots of life in the 1950s—the High Noon of our American civilization. The book’s “pure and innocent” narrator will have told you how it feels to grow up in a simpler, saner time than the one we live in today. One in which the outside world is “vague as fog.” When he steps through the curtain into the wider world, you too will feel the sting of racism, the pain of assassination, the futility of war, and the frustrations of living in an overly materialistic world.  

 If you like condensed short stores that you can read slowly—even aloud, that will make you laugh and cry, I believe you will be pleased with Mianus Village. It is a book written to suit your lifestyle and busy schedule. You can read it in one sitting or over and over again. It is meant to be a keepsake from one generation to another.