My Philosophy

A masterfully written metrical poem has two stories to tell – two tales: one in its words; the other in its meter.

If you read this blog, then you will notice that I have a bias.

My bias is in favoring poetry that is written in meter, that uses form, or that plays with language in ways that separate poetry from prose – rhetoric, imagery, simile, metaphor, conceit, rhyme, meter. And my preference is to call this kind of poetry Traditional Poetry.

The demands that form places on the poet, especially when using meter, is considerably greater than when writing free verse. Few poets do it well. But reading well written meter is like watching professionally played tennis (with a net).

Great poetry can be written in free verse. After Apple Picking, by Robert Frost, is in my opinion one of the greatest – and written by a self-avowed formalist. T.S. Eliot wrote free verse with genius. But free verse has been around for a very long time – over a hundred years. I suspect, though I haven’t confirmed, that far more free-verse poems have been written and are in existence than poems in any other form combined. (There are more people writing, more publishing, in more venues than ever in the history of human literature.)

Free verse has all the advocates it needs.

But I find that free-verse has flattened out. It’s stale – like longboarding on flat ground. I’m always open to the free-verse poet who infuses his or her writing with something more than can be found in the prose of the average diary – the rare poet like Mary Oliver – but they are hard to find.

But great poetry can be written in any form.

If studying meter, rhetoric, metaphysical poems, metaphor or the sonnet makes one a better free-verse poet, then I’m all for it.

Criticizing poetry: I’m a poet, not a critic. I’ll avoid “criticizing” the poetry of contemporary poets who are not widely recognized, anthologized or securely established. Poets have a hard enough time as it is. I should be so lucky, if I’m ever an established poet, to have one of my poems be the center of attention – good or bad.

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