Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

Robert Frost [1874-1963].

 

They gave him a very hard time,

your poems, they said, they all rhyme,

the verses are all the same length.

Predictable! Oh Lord! Give me strength!

 

We don't like spoon mooning in June,

though we do enjoy gloom and doom,

but lines that rhyme are a hideous crime,

make an effort to do better, next time.

 

Your poems need the freedom to sing,

at the end of the line they should swing.

It might just be us, or the passing of time,

but acceptable poems... no longer rhyme.

 

Rule bound and pedantic, unable to bend,

the rule breakers will get you in the end.

 

 

End Note:   Modernoids have swamped the literature with a ‘rhyming is anathema’ philosophy of unintelligible ramblings. I am not against free verse but I believe it should come as ‘gently falling rain’ not as an all-consuming tsunami. 

 

However, even now as the ‘stream of consciousness’ brigade herd the emerging poets towards the grey banality of rampant modernism, revolution is in the wind.

 

I am genuinely amazed that poetry workshop organizers and presenters - and other persons who pay more attention to the ‘modernistic code’ than it merits - are hardly ever murdered. Therefore, I wrote this truly awful piece dedicated to the confusion of grief dealing pedants, and you know who you are…

 

 

Poetry Workshop Liverpool NSW © Dermott Ryder

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