OK, Robin, but that iambic pentameter thingee would require (aside from
lines of roughly equal length) a pretty forgiving definition of an iamb.

In practice the act of composition for those of us who write free verse is
decidedly different from that of poets who count syllables. Williams made
the point by redefining the foot as rhythmic unit. And the music tends
towards syncopation and surprise.

Creeley does tend to write in lines of approximately equal length, tho
rarely the length of a pentameter line. Somewhere he says that the size of
the page on which one writes tends to determine the length of the line. Not
true for me, but I guess it is for him. Here's a chunk out of the middle of
his poem "The Finger," which for me is one of the great poems of last
century, from his book _Pieces_ (1969):

I had the pack,
the tattered clothing,
was neither a man nor not one,
all that--

and who was she,
with the fire behind her,
in the mess of that place,
the dust, the scattered pieces,

her skin so warm,
so masive, so stolid in her
smiling the charm did not
move her but rather

kept her half-sleepy attention,
yawning, indulging the manny
who jiggled a world before her
made of his mind.

She was young,
she was old,
she was small.
She was tall with

extraordinary grace. Her face
was all distance, her eyes
the depth of all one had thought of,
again and again and again.

To approach, to hold her,
was not possible.
She laughed and turned
and the heavy folds of cloth

parted. ...

etc.


There's a suppleness of rhythm here that's rarely possible in prestructured
verse. And there's no place where a line needs to be filled out just to
make up the length of a pattern. One example of many. I'd certainly direct
anyone to Lorine Niedecker's "My Life by Water" for another.

Frost (I hope it was Frost, or I'll feel pretty silly) famously quipped
that free verse was no verse at all, and as a writer to my mind of noverse
he certainly should have known. But he had a point that he didn't realize.
One has the freedom to let the poem's dance evolve, but that freedom begins
to diminish as soon as one sets down the first letter. What comes before
acts as a formal constraint, at once focusing and diminsihing the range of
possibilities. It's as if one discovered the idea of poetic form in the
making of the idea that each poem is.

I hope all this helps. But I suspect that the question was intended as a
setup for Henry.

Mark





At 11:30 PM 7/26/2001 +0100, Robin Hamilton wrote:
>Well, Josephine, one would be Fats Domino on jazz, "If you don't know by
>now, lady ..."
>
>Two might be Robert Frost, playing tennis without a net.
>
>Three is usually nobody can -- so if you can come up with a definition ...
>
>Four is watch the line-endings. In formal (metered) verse, you know when
>you've reached the end of the line when you reach the right number of
>syllables. Free verse is more complicated, which is why (despite
>appearances) it's actually more difficult to write well than metrical verse.
>
>Five (last one, promise!) is that most free verse is loose iambic pentameter
>unrhymed.
>
>(Oh, and it means something different in English than it does in French.)
>
>Cheers
>
>Robin
>
>(PS -- Henry isn't writing free verse in his example, but ripping WCW. Yet
>Another Wheelbarrow in the Rain. Typical Henry.
>
>Ro2)
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Printmaker" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 11:11 PM
>Subject: Re: Definitions
>
>
>> Henry wrote:
>> >
>> > Can someone
>> > define
>> > "free verse"
>> > please?
>> >
>> > Can someone define "free
>> > verse" please?
>> >
>> > Can
>> > someone define
>> > "free verse"
>> >
>> > please?
>> >
>> > Pretty please?
>>
>>
>> Ha Ha very funny
>>
>> If its completely unstructured how is it verse? mmmmm?
>>
>> And if its structured, what are the 'rules'?
>>
>> Still trying to reconcile the definition
>> "its not even good prose"
>> as a requirement of good poetry
>> in light of much of what is posted here
>>
>> confused, hopefully temporarily
>>
>> jospehine
>