Mary Oliver A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver

Author:Mary Oliver
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2021-03-17T07:15:30+00:00

Verse

That Is Free

Design

The name itself—free verse—implies that this kind of poetry rose out of a desire for release from the restraints of meter, the measured line, and strict rhyming patterns.

Other terms are used to indicate this kind of verse also—

the "fluid" poem, the "organic" poem. Each of the terms tries, but not very successfully, to say just what this kind of poetry is. The second and third terms are closer to the truth than "free verse"; still, "free verse" is the term most widely used.

Free verse is not, of course, free. It is free from formal metrical design, but it certainly isn't free from some kind of design. Is poetry language that is spontaneous, impulsive? Yes, it is. Is it also language that is composed, considered, appropriate, and effective, though you read the poem a hundred times? Yes, it is, And this is as true of free verse as it is of metrical verse.

No one, however, can say just exactly what the free-verse design is. Partly because it is so different from one

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A POETRY

HANDBOOK

poem to another. Partly because we are so close to the beginnings of it. Metrical verse has been written for centuries, and, before that, poetry depended on strict application of alliteration or some pattern of light and heavy stresses. Poets began to write free verse near the beginning of this century. Free verse is still in its de-velopmental stages, then. The rules are not yet set in stone, or even in clay. Discussing free verse is like talking about an iceberg, a shining object that is mostly un-derwater.

The free-verse poem sets up, in terms of sound and line, a premise or an expectation, and then, before the poem finishes, it makes a good response to this premise.

This is the poem's design. What it sets up in the beginning it sings back to, all the way, attaining a felt integrity.

The initial premise is made up of everything the old metrical premise is composed of—sound, line length, and rhythm patterns, but in this case they are not strict, they are not metrical. They do, however, make emphatic use of stresses, as speech does. Is speech not musical too? It is, indeed, and many of the old devices, such as refrain and repetition, are therefore still effective. Allit-eration and assonance are as important as ever.

This much is certainly true: the free-verse poem, when finished, must "feel" like a poem—it must be an intended and an effective presentation. It need not scan, but it may scan a little if the poet is so inclined. It need not rhyme in a definite pattern, but it may rhyme a little, if the poet decides to rhyme a little. It need not follow particular stanza formations, though of course it may have stanzas. It need not follow any of the old rules,

VERSE THAT IS FREE

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necessarily. Neither does it have to avoid all of them,

necessarily.

Tone and Content

Perhaps free verse was a product of the times. Perhaps it resulted from a desire on the part of writers at the beginning of this century to alter the tone of the poem.

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