The vast majority of free verse is ghastly. Utterly ghastly. No one reads it. No one listens to it.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.
I've read some of your modern free verse and wonder who set it free.
Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
There are people who think it's easier to write books in verse, and it's definitely not.
First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it.
And what holds good of verse holds infinitely better in respect to prose.
Verse satire indeed is entirely our own.
To me, a poem that's in rhyme and meter is the difference between watching a film in full color and watching a film in black and white. Not that a few black and white films aren't wonderful. So are certain successful pieces of free verse.
It is not just shameful for a contemporary American poet to use rhymes, it is unthinkable. It seems banal to him; he fears banality worse than anything, and therefore, he uses free verse - though free verse is no guarantee against banality.
I never abandoned either forms or freedom. I imagine that most of what could be called free verse is in my first book. I got through that fairly early.