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RE: "In Toga-Armor Clad" (poem) ... My Daughter's Scholarship Entry
Well, expanding one's horizons is never bad. I won't be surprised if in college she'll have to write in free verse as well as in metered structure, f'rex :3
And as noted in some places, free verse isn't really free. It often obeys many rules of its own. ESpecially rhythm. As for alliteration, that has a home in free verse as well.
@geekorner,
You've been talking to @blockurator, haven't you?
Did he put you up to this?
Free Verse ... that guy's a bad influence. :-)
Quill
I think I wrote free-verse on Steemit before Blockurator joined ;-)
And as noted in some citations on Wikipedia, free-verse has a lot of rules. At least the good kind.
Rhymes are easy to do bad. Hard to do well. I think giving up on rhyme and some of the metered verses is needed to grow your basic skills, and then you can go back to meter and rhyme and apply them properly.
Free verse is like playing tennis with the net down. Of course, where I come from, we call that four square with rackets. Nets are for sissies.
@blockurator,
My favorite angsty anti-Free Verse quote:
... Four Square with rackets :-)
Quill
@geekorner.
Or ... learn to write poetry from a persnickety Dad. :-)
Quill
I don't know what kind of basic skills you'd acquire by giving up on rhyme and meter. Those ARE the basic skills. Start there. If you can master rhyme and meter, then you can write free verse. If all you can do is write free verse, all you can do is spill your guts on a page. That's not poetry.
@blockurator,
You make a good point. There are actually Free Verse poems that I like (don't tell anyone ... I have a reputation to protect) and in every single case, the poet's knowledge of traditional poetic techniques was obvious. The poet was not writing Free Verse because they had to (couldn't write Verse), but because they chose to.
I have a dozen or so Quillisms that I've coined over the years that I've tried, a million times, to set to Verse ... but they always get butchered in the process. And so, quietly (in a dark room), I once crafted a few into Free Verse.
I've never published any of them as doing so would entail my having to eat a 1,000 tons of crow ... but who knows ... perhaps some day. :-)
Quill
Traitor!