It seems to me that we find the same tendency in all the arts. It's a clubby snobbism, an elitism, to be able to say we enjoyed something utterly unenjoyable. In art schools, students aren't taught the mechanics of drawing, how to see, translate what the eye sees to two dimensions. What matters is impact, provocation, malaise. Modern music is incapable of transmitting any emotion but unease, because it uses only the sound combinations that the ear associates with horror films. The lyrical, the beautiful, the awe-inspiring, the wonderful is considered trite and superficial. Only the angst-ridden and shocking is valid. In poetry, we applaud the obscure, the smugly impenetrable, which as you say is only 'a feeling' which must never be more closely inspected or explained because that would be to diminish its cleverness. Poetry is no longer about communicating anything universal, it's an ego-trip, self-indulgence. Rhyme and meter explain, guide the reader towards an emotion, and create something memorable, often uplifting because we can relate to it. The purveyors of obscurity deny that accessibility. It's all about the artist. I can't see the merit in any of it, but thousands do. Maybe because it gives them entry to the select club of those who 'know'.
I appreciate your perspective so much. Thanks for putting into words what I feel when I look at so many poems these days. My strategy for dealing with this is to focus on image and avoid talking about myself as much as I can in a poem, but now I am tempted to add meter back in as well.
I’m glad I wasn’t speaking out of turn. I tend to get carried away with my irritation for this fad for making everything impenetrable. It’s as though it’s sinful to enjoy anything simple or simply beautiful, no melodic music, lyrical poetry or prose, visual art that captures a moment of beauty, an expression or a movement. I try for the same effect as you—images and some message that’s deeper than my own little navel. I love meter. Doesn’t have to rhyme, but it’s like singing, and it’s something the obscurantists don’t understand.
Agree with you Jane, there isn’t a single poet I’d remember after TS Eliot now…
Seems we are so much soaked in confusion that there is no connection to the source. Reading those ego trips things, aside the waste of precious time, gives a very wrong message that this is the art endorsed by society.
Don't apologize! If you are interested, here is a couple by each that I enjoy. They have expansive catalogues and I am no expert so they have much more to explore.
I agree. I think it’s the wrong message too. It tells us that art is not something that everyone should be able to enjoy, only the very special people who are clever enough to appreciate
I've consider writing a piece entitled "Against Free Verse"—not because I do not enjoy free verse (when it is well done), but because I believe it should be the exception that proves the rule. Unfortunately it has become the rule, and has therefore made itself more obscure, easier to fake, and harder to enjoy. One needs clear rules to break. There is nothing innovative about the arbitrary. Consider that most of the visual "art" for sale at American Furniture Warehouse is abstract, and one can perhaps see that for all the power of Rothko or Pollock, the greater legacy of that movement is the proliferation of twaddle unworthy even of dentist office decor. I offer this as something of an analogue. The artist tries to capture "the look"; the poet tries to capture "the voice." The only joke is an inside joke, which nobody understands but everyone smugly defends.
Well said Tullius. Was it Frost who said, "It's no fun if there's no net"? I think free verse has been exhausted of its essence. A return to form would be welcome. And I'd love to read of essay of yours against free verse.
I taught poetry once by starting, first thing first day, with 70 different definitions of poetry found on the web. I then pulled out several sources for the definition of verse: all were 'metered language'. When free verse was first entering the culture, even those trying it would agree that 'free' is the opposite of verse. Now, terrible and ignorant poets write flat, chopped up prose. They can't even imagine a poem as anything different than any other piece of language.
While I enjoy writing in free verse, I do recognize that the looseness of modern free verse has made poetry lose one of its most valuable qualities—the ability to challenge both the reader and the poet. Structured forms demand a level of artistry where emotion isn’t simply stated but carefully woven through rhythm, meter, and wordplay. That challenge forces poets to refine their expression, making their work more layered and resonant.
Perhaps this shift away from structure comes from a desire for immediate resonance with readers. In a time where attention is fleeting, modern poets may feel pressured to make their emotions instantly accessible, rather than trusting in the slow, unfolding power of form and technique. Although, this is just a thought as I cannot speak for everyone.
I personally find working with structure, meter, and rhythm very challenging, and I often end up veering into free verse, just letting the words flow. But I do see and understand your point, and it saddens me too. That’s why, as much as possible, I try to instill those elements into my poetry whenever I write. The keyword here is try.
"Structured forms demand a level of artistry where emotion isn’t simply stated but carefully woven through rhythm, meter, and wordplay. That challenge forces poets to refine their expression, making their work more layered and resonant." Beautifully said Annieguile. Well-constructed verse is more challenging, both for the reader and the writer.
There's this misconception that, in order to express, say, confusion, the lines have to be confused themselves. The New Critics called this the Imitative Fallacy. It's possible to convey any emotion through well-constructed verse, and perhaps better because it has been crafted at every possible level of sound and sense.
I learned a new term today—haha! I do think a lot of modern poetry leans into directness under the guise of being "raw," but that can sometimes strip away the depth that comes with careful construction. There’s a difference between rawness that is powerful because it’s well-crafted and rawness that simply states emotions outright, without layers for the reader to unpack.
Poetry, to me, is meant to be read slowly—to be absorbed, felt, and unraveled. That’s what made me fall in love with it at 13: the way words can open new realities, and how a single poem can hold different meanings for different readers. That’s the beauty of it. A well-crafted verse makes you reread, not because it’s difficult, but because it moves you in ways that need processing.
But in today’s culture of instant gratification, poetry often leans toward surface-level emotions rather than the slow burn of layered verse. And I think this shift isn’t just in poetry—it reflects a broader change in how we consume art and ideas.
Back in school, I loved dissecting poetry and hearing how everyone had a unique interpretation. I wonder what future generations will think of today’s poetry—how it will be read, discussed, or remembered.
I agree with you there. A lot of the stuff I read when I was younger I didn’t always understand, but I could intuit something there, beneath the surface. I think the test of great poetry is its lasting power, its ability to deepen as you yourself mature. It’s a very different thing than the shallow instapoetry, which vanishes almost as quickly as it’s read.
Very thoughtful and interesting piece, Robert. I guess my take on it is a lot more basic. The poetry that speaks to me is the poetry that sings to me. Or sings through me.
That’s a good way of putting it, Dan. Why it sings to you, however, might be a function of how it’s written. Meter is part of that symphony that makes poems sing.
Absolutely. I’m a huge proponent of meter and rhyme in poetry. I appreciate and enjoy free verse but there’s something very special and powerful and sacred to me about the music that can bring a poem to life and stay with me, like a song.
A little late to the party here (and I know I have a lot more catching up to do at this point). This is going to be a long one!
As someone who was introduced to poetry through free verse and free verse translations, it was the only way I knew how to write. I'm finishing up an MFA now, have studied prosody and the poetic tradition, and find it hard to read or write free verse anymore. I'm a torn. The best free verse avails itself of those rhythmic qualities you describe in your post—those poems and poets had an ear for time, tempo, beat, whatever you want to call it. Sometimes contemporary formal poetry can appear rigid by comparison (I'm including my own poetry here). I'm not above it all—the temptation is there to return to free verse and maybe get more publications that way... but I actually can't do it anymore! My ear for free verse doesn't work well anymore. I suppose I'm seeking a happy medium between the two extremes of my own work: poetry that is fundamentally metrical while remaining fresh and engaging to the ear as well as to the mind. Finally, tangentially, I'm frustrated in seeing that even the most experimental contemporary fiction is expected to adhere to certain accepted fundamentals of craft, but adhering to fundamentals of poetic craft is seen as outdated.
Appreciate your comment Isabella. I'm in search of that happy medium, too. It's in that tension between the music and the natural cadences of speech that I find poetry most satisfying.
You and Nik Hoffman have got to be comparing notes. Both of you are crafting some real quality work to the end of bringing poetry back around to its artistic and lyrical heights. Thank you for your efforts.
Thanks Mark. I’ve read Nik’s piece about local poetry, although I’ve yet to talk to him about it. Always happy to see more people talking about the craft as a whole. He’s great.
Thanks for this wonderful analysis of rhyme. I’m old fashioned, and old, for that matter, and I love singing and listening to music, particularly very old stuff, from the 16th and 17th century, and a whole lot of hymns. I mostly write rhymes, because what I hear in my head is music that has patterns and rhythms and sounds that go together. I don’t analyze deeply. Poetry snobs, no doubt, turn up their noses at that and dismiss anything organized into a rhyme as primitive and puerile. Well, so be it, but for me, it’s whatever works, as I’m no expert. I write what I feel. I am of the opinion that it’s much harder to write a rhyme than it is to put down a few words on a few lines and call it a poem. I get the greatest satisfaction just having a few readers enjoy what I do.
Thank you Carole. More traditional poetry has been out of favor for awhile now, but I feel like it will swing back around eventually. It’s anyway what the general public responds to and, I think, desires from poetry. It’s partly why we still read those older poets, because they showed a mastery of their craft.
Reading this, I arbitrarily felt the urge to disambiguate a couple of related phenomenon that are tangled in my head;
* poetry as memoir
* poetry that doesn't need to make sense
* poetry that is not metrical or oral but very written
It is true that much poetry today belongs to all three of these categories at once. And that in the distant past most poems would not belong to any of these categories. But there is in the recent past different variations:
* Bidart does memoir but a child could read him
* Ashbery is interested in all the ways of not making sense, but is as impersonal as mt olympus
* slam poetry makes sense, might be memoir, and is always very oral
And we could combine the categories any which way in the future:
* memoir that makes sense and is oral (This American life?)
* slam poetry that doesn't make sense and leans into surrealism (Ginsberg redux?)
In any case, I digress. Your main point is that modern poetry is cut off from the public and its vital tradition, including formal elements like meter. To that, gods yes! So what would a more popular poetry look like, if not the kind of memoir as therapy you see on instagram? I think, first of all, it needs to make sense. Video montage and MTV have got surrealism covered. Poetry can return to at least attempt to make sense. And it needs to be more oral, rap takes it to an extreme, where words are completely subservient to the beat. There is some middle ground between sound and sense.
Meter seems such a natural part of being human. Mothers rock their babies with it. Children learn the alphabet and simple mathematics with it, even soldiers march to it. We even love by it.
I taught poetry once by starting, first thing first day, with 70 different definitions of poetry found on the web. I then pulled out several sources for the definition of verse: all were 'metered language'. When free verse was first entering the culture, even those trying it would agree that 'free' is the opposite of verse. Now, terrible and ignorant poets write flat, chopped up prose. They can't even imagine a poem as anything different than any other piece of language.
Very helpful and inspiring as a regular guy becoming a poet of sorts. I have found that occasionally in my short time writing there are topics that have lent themselves to a particular metre, rhyme, or specific form. Even one or two that seem like they fit best being free!
All this being said, I do come across poetry that is 'of a form' which is still very opaque and wheedling, inaccessible to laypeople, and sometimes unenjoyable. It seems like that aspect is more of a personality trait amongst some who become poets, and less about which style of poetry they choose to write.
That’s a great point. @Peter Whisenant and I have argued about this before, about whether poetry is moral or not. I would say it’s ethical, meaning that to some degree your style reflects your personality.
It seems to me that we find the same tendency in all the arts. It's a clubby snobbism, an elitism, to be able to say we enjoyed something utterly unenjoyable. In art schools, students aren't taught the mechanics of drawing, how to see, translate what the eye sees to two dimensions. What matters is impact, provocation, malaise. Modern music is incapable of transmitting any emotion but unease, because it uses only the sound combinations that the ear associates with horror films. The lyrical, the beautiful, the awe-inspiring, the wonderful is considered trite and superficial. Only the angst-ridden and shocking is valid. In poetry, we applaud the obscure, the smugly impenetrable, which as you say is only 'a feeling' which must never be more closely inspected or explained because that would be to diminish its cleverness. Poetry is no longer about communicating anything universal, it's an ego-trip, self-indulgence. Rhyme and meter explain, guide the reader towards an emotion, and create something memorable, often uplifting because we can relate to it. The purveyors of obscurity deny that accessibility. It's all about the artist. I can't see the merit in any of it, but thousands do. Maybe because it gives them entry to the select club of those who 'know'.
I appreciate your perspective so much. Thanks for putting into words what I feel when I look at so many poems these days. My strategy for dealing with this is to focus on image and avoid talking about myself as much as I can in a poem, but now I am tempted to add meter back in as well.
I’m glad I wasn’t speaking out of turn. I tend to get carried away with my irritation for this fad for making everything impenetrable. It’s as though it’s sinful to enjoy anything simple or simply beautiful, no melodic music, lyrical poetry or prose, visual art that captures a moment of beauty, an expression or a movement. I try for the same effect as you—images and some message that’s deeper than my own little navel. I love meter. Doesn’t have to rhyme, but it’s like singing, and it’s something the obscurantists don’t understand.
Agree with you Jane, there isn’t a single poet I’d remember after TS Eliot now…
Seems we are so much soaked in confusion that there is no connection to the source. Reading those ego trips things, aside the waste of precious time, gives a very wrong message that this is the art endorsed by society.
What do you think of Larkin and/or Auden as poets after Eliot that are memorable and worked with form?
I'm sure you weren't asking me but... I love both. They were opposing each other, of course. If forced, I take Auden.
It was a question for the room! ;) And I didn't mean for it to be an either or; both writers have written poems that amaze me.
Sorry Nick, since do not know them, cannot comment. It’s nice if there are more than I know anyway.
Don't apologize! If you are interested, here is a couple by each that I enjoy. They have expansive catalogues and I am no expert so they have much more to explore.
Auden:
- https://allpoetry.com/If-I-Could-Tell-You
- https://allpoetry.com/Friday's-Child
Larkin:
- https://wherepoetrycrosses.blogspot.com/2014/09/simon-russell-beale-recites-philip.html
- https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse
Lovely!
Thank you for the suggestion, something new to learn.
I agree. I think it’s the wrong message too. It tells us that art is not something that everyone should be able to enjoy, only the very special people who are clever enough to appreciate
I've consider writing a piece entitled "Against Free Verse"—not because I do not enjoy free verse (when it is well done), but because I believe it should be the exception that proves the rule. Unfortunately it has become the rule, and has therefore made itself more obscure, easier to fake, and harder to enjoy. One needs clear rules to break. There is nothing innovative about the arbitrary. Consider that most of the visual "art" for sale at American Furniture Warehouse is abstract, and one can perhaps see that for all the power of Rothko or Pollock, the greater legacy of that movement is the proliferation of twaddle unworthy even of dentist office decor. I offer this as something of an analogue. The artist tries to capture "the look"; the poet tries to capture "the voice." The only joke is an inside joke, which nobody understands but everyone smugly defends.
Well said Tullius. Was it Frost who said, "It's no fun if there's no net"? I think free verse has been exhausted of its essence. A return to form would be welcome. And I'd love to read of essay of yours against free verse.
I taught poetry once by starting, first thing first day, with 70 different definitions of poetry found on the web. I then pulled out several sources for the definition of verse: all were 'metered language'. When free verse was first entering the culture, even those trying it would agree that 'free' is the opposite of verse. Now, terrible and ignorant poets write flat, chopped up prose. They can't even imagine a poem as anything different than any other piece of language.
While I enjoy writing in free verse, I do recognize that the looseness of modern free verse has made poetry lose one of its most valuable qualities—the ability to challenge both the reader and the poet. Structured forms demand a level of artistry where emotion isn’t simply stated but carefully woven through rhythm, meter, and wordplay. That challenge forces poets to refine their expression, making their work more layered and resonant.
Perhaps this shift away from structure comes from a desire for immediate resonance with readers. In a time where attention is fleeting, modern poets may feel pressured to make their emotions instantly accessible, rather than trusting in the slow, unfolding power of form and technique. Although, this is just a thought as I cannot speak for everyone.
I personally find working with structure, meter, and rhythm very challenging, and I often end up veering into free verse, just letting the words flow. But I do see and understand your point, and it saddens me too. That’s why, as much as possible, I try to instill those elements into my poetry whenever I write. The keyword here is try.
"Structured forms demand a level of artistry where emotion isn’t simply stated but carefully woven through rhythm, meter, and wordplay. That challenge forces poets to refine their expression, making their work more layered and resonant." Beautifully said Annieguile. Well-constructed verse is more challenging, both for the reader and the writer.
There's this misconception that, in order to express, say, confusion, the lines have to be confused themselves. The New Critics called this the Imitative Fallacy. It's possible to convey any emotion through well-constructed verse, and perhaps better because it has been crafted at every possible level of sound and sense.
I learned a new term today—haha! I do think a lot of modern poetry leans into directness under the guise of being "raw," but that can sometimes strip away the depth that comes with careful construction. There’s a difference between rawness that is powerful because it’s well-crafted and rawness that simply states emotions outright, without layers for the reader to unpack.
Poetry, to me, is meant to be read slowly—to be absorbed, felt, and unraveled. That’s what made me fall in love with it at 13: the way words can open new realities, and how a single poem can hold different meanings for different readers. That’s the beauty of it. A well-crafted verse makes you reread, not because it’s difficult, but because it moves you in ways that need processing.
But in today’s culture of instant gratification, poetry often leans toward surface-level emotions rather than the slow burn of layered verse. And I think this shift isn’t just in poetry—it reflects a broader change in how we consume art and ideas.
Back in school, I loved dissecting poetry and hearing how everyone had a unique interpretation. I wonder what future generations will think of today’s poetry—how it will be read, discussed, or remembered.
I agree with you there. A lot of the stuff I read when I was younger I didn’t always understand, but I could intuit something there, beneath the surface. I think the test of great poetry is its lasting power, its ability to deepen as you yourself mature. It’s a very different thing than the shallow instapoetry, which vanishes almost as quickly as it’s read.
Very thoughtful and interesting piece, Robert. I guess my take on it is a lot more basic. The poetry that speaks to me is the poetry that sings to me. Or sings through me.
That’s a good way of putting it, Dan. Why it sings to you, however, might be a function of how it’s written. Meter is part of that symphony that makes poems sing.
Absolutely. I’m a huge proponent of meter and rhyme in poetry. I appreciate and enjoy free verse but there’s something very special and powerful and sacred to me about the music that can bring a poem to life and stay with me, like a song.
Definitely. It’s a singular experience, reading a great poem
A little late to the party here (and I know I have a lot more catching up to do at this point). This is going to be a long one!
As someone who was introduced to poetry through free verse and free verse translations, it was the only way I knew how to write. I'm finishing up an MFA now, have studied prosody and the poetic tradition, and find it hard to read or write free verse anymore. I'm a torn. The best free verse avails itself of those rhythmic qualities you describe in your post—those poems and poets had an ear for time, tempo, beat, whatever you want to call it. Sometimes contemporary formal poetry can appear rigid by comparison (I'm including my own poetry here). I'm not above it all—the temptation is there to return to free verse and maybe get more publications that way... but I actually can't do it anymore! My ear for free verse doesn't work well anymore. I suppose I'm seeking a happy medium between the two extremes of my own work: poetry that is fundamentally metrical while remaining fresh and engaging to the ear as well as to the mind. Finally, tangentially, I'm frustrated in seeing that even the most experimental contemporary fiction is expected to adhere to certain accepted fundamentals of craft, but adhering to fundamentals of poetic craft is seen as outdated.
Appreciate your comment Isabella. I'm in search of that happy medium, too. It's in that tension between the music and the natural cadences of speech that I find poetry most satisfying.
You and Nik Hoffman have got to be comparing notes. Both of you are crafting some real quality work to the end of bringing poetry back around to its artistic and lyrical heights. Thank you for your efforts.
Thanks Mark. I’ve read Nik’s piece about local poetry, although I’ve yet to talk to him about it. Always happy to see more people talking about the craft as a whole. He’s great.
Thanks for this wonderful analysis of rhyme. I’m old fashioned, and old, for that matter, and I love singing and listening to music, particularly very old stuff, from the 16th and 17th century, and a whole lot of hymns. I mostly write rhymes, because what I hear in my head is music that has patterns and rhythms and sounds that go together. I don’t analyze deeply. Poetry snobs, no doubt, turn up their noses at that and dismiss anything organized into a rhyme as primitive and puerile. Well, so be it, but for me, it’s whatever works, as I’m no expert. I write what I feel. I am of the opinion that it’s much harder to write a rhyme than it is to put down a few words on a few lines and call it a poem. I get the greatest satisfaction just having a few readers enjoy what I do.
Thank you Carole. More traditional poetry has been out of favor for awhile now, but I feel like it will swing back around eventually. It’s anyway what the general public responds to and, I think, desires from poetry. It’s partly why we still read those older poets, because they showed a mastery of their craft.
Reading this, I arbitrarily felt the urge to disambiguate a couple of related phenomenon that are tangled in my head;
* poetry as memoir
* poetry that doesn't need to make sense
* poetry that is not metrical or oral but very written
It is true that much poetry today belongs to all three of these categories at once. And that in the distant past most poems would not belong to any of these categories. But there is in the recent past different variations:
* Bidart does memoir but a child could read him
* Ashbery is interested in all the ways of not making sense, but is as impersonal as mt olympus
* slam poetry makes sense, might be memoir, and is always very oral
And we could combine the categories any which way in the future:
* memoir that makes sense and is oral (This American life?)
* slam poetry that doesn't make sense and leans into surrealism (Ginsberg redux?)
In any case, I digress. Your main point is that modern poetry is cut off from the public and its vital tradition, including formal elements like meter. To that, gods yes! So what would a more popular poetry look like, if not the kind of memoir as therapy you see on instagram? I think, first of all, it needs to make sense. Video montage and MTV have got surrealism covered. Poetry can return to at least attempt to make sense. And it needs to be more oral, rap takes it to an extreme, where words are completely subservient to the beat. There is some middle ground between sound and sense.
Making sense is a good place to start. Not just to oneself, but for others’ sake.
Meter seems such a natural part of being human. Mothers rock their babies with it. Children learn the alphabet and simple mathematics with it, even soldiers march to it. We even love by it.
And with that, I say,
A Poet’s Elegy (or The Reluctant Poet)
By Maria Corazon de la Cruz
I’ve stumbled into a battlefield,
And being the ignorant fool I am,
I approach without sword or shield-
And become the sacrificial lamb.
Neither a gentleman nor a scholar.
I’m neither a soldier nor a slave.
Being bred in literary squalor—
I’ve become a literary knave
I have neither time nor season.
I have neither hope nor a prayer.
I am without rhyme nor reason.
I’m more of a poet than a slayer.
I had a tilt at this in a recent post, mainly on the theme of “stickability”. https://open.substack.com/pub/undergrowth/p/on-the-struggle-of-a-poetry-grump?r=14br2&utm_medium=ios
Really great stuff. Never knew all that! Well researched for sure. I recently wrote a short story. Curious on your thoughts. No pressure of course.
https://open.substack.com/pub/dbtaylor/p/the-life-of-all?r=22o631&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
I taught poetry once by starting, first thing first day, with 70 different definitions of poetry found on the web. I then pulled out several sources for the definition of verse: all were 'metered language'. When free verse was first entering the culture, even those trying it would agree that 'free' is the opposite of verse. Now, terrible and ignorant poets write flat, chopped up prose. They can't even imagine a poem as anything different than any other piece of language.
Very helpful and inspiring as a regular guy becoming a poet of sorts. I have found that occasionally in my short time writing there are topics that have lent themselves to a particular metre, rhyme, or specific form. Even one or two that seem like they fit best being free!
All this being said, I do come across poetry that is 'of a form' which is still very opaque and wheedling, inaccessible to laypeople, and sometimes unenjoyable. It seems like that aspect is more of a personality trait amongst some who become poets, and less about which style of poetry they choose to write.
That’s a great point. @Peter Whisenant and I have argued about this before, about whether poetry is moral or not. I would say it’s ethical, meaning that to some degree your style reflects your personality.
I will say more, but for now, I'll just say that I write metrical stuff which you might enjoy
Thanks Barsley I’ll check your stuff out.
What an interesting and comprehensive review, to my uneducated eyes, I tend to see writing as a value in terms of content and emotion conveyed.
Would you say Robert—that meter (hence the form) does in a way affect the content?
The argument is elegant though, and would love to improve my metric (I write between random and self taught for now).
Do you have any metric structure you’d recommend for beginners?