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.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I've read some of your modern free verse and wonder who set it free.
Free verse seemed democratic because it offered freedom of access to writers. And those who disdained free verse would always be open to accusations of elitism, mandarinism. Open form was like common ground on which all might graze their cattle - it was not to be closed in by usurping landlords.
Literature led me to freedom, not the other way round.
In all my life, I have never been free. I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.
Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it's no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.
But there is some way in which poets believe that and this is dangerous, too believe that their calling gives them a certain freedom. A certain freedom to live in a free way.
The vast majority of free verse is ghastly. Utterly ghastly. No one reads it. No one listens to it.
I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.
Their free verse was no form at all, yet it made history.