The trouble is Uche, it's not rot, not historically. Of course it
wasn't the case that everyone who wrote free verse was hippy or
leftist or whatever and everyone who wrote iambic was conservative -
but it was the case, particularly here in the UK, that behind the
conscious choice of writing one way or the other lay that same nexus
of belief and life-style that lent itself to political leanings and
ideological gestures. The perception that free verse was, by its very
name and nature, linked to ideas of freedom and an example of that
freedom in action, was common. So too was the notion of form as being
conservative, anal, fussy, stuck in the past, concerned with outmoded
ways of thinking, anti progress, anti free etc.
That moment lasted in its pure black and white state for a very
limited period - it soon morphed and became a lot more complex - but
in many peoples' minds the opposition continued and even now you can
pick it up in a section of the rump of surviving small-press magazines
etc. If anything the idea lasted a lot longer in the States than it
did in the UK - it became one of the main street-level oppositions to
the poetry of the avant garde formalists and intellectuals.
I have written before concerning the subtle shift in the ideology of
free verse from progressive to reactionary that has taken place over
the past 30 years.
Tim A.
On 13 Apr 2010, at 23:32, Uche Ogbuji wrote:
> Sometimes a fool is just a fool. People who think that poetic form
> has some
> bearing on politics infuriate me. I have no idea how the prejudice
> came
> about that hippies write in free verse and that Reaganite-
> Thatcherites write
> in form, but I'd love to take a stick of dynamite to that rot.
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