> It is the definitional tautology on which
> free verse is predicated.
Ah, there's the axe. I thought I heard a grinding noise. Hwaet!
You're saying that because authors of free verse don't write according
to a particular set of metrical rules, they're playing tennis with the
net down and can't reasonably complain if poetry competitions are
judged according to outrageously irrelevant criteria, like who slept
with who or who gave the judges the biggest bribe. Which is, frankly,
rot. It's possible to have reasons for liking some free verse better
than other free verse that will have almost everything to do with what
the verse itself is like, and absolutely nothing to do with any sexual
favours one might have traded with the author. One might at least
expect the judges of a poetry competition to base their arbitrations
on an honest subjective opinion of the poetry itself, rather than of
the author as a putative piece of ass. (And anyway, if it were a
question of quality and/or availability of ass, [insert name here]
would win every competition going...).
I suppose that if one refused to believe that it *was* possible to
have reasons for liking any free verse at all - if one saw it all as
an indiscriminate muddle, and avowed that people who thought they
could tell the difference between one lexical pile-up and another were
simply kidding themselves - then one might feel the temptation to crow
at the alleged ethical corruption of some of its practitioners. But it
would be an ignoble temptation to succumb to, even then.
Dominic
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