No one writes in meter anymore

Newsletter lucky number 13 from Common Measure.

A verse not bound by rhyme and beat
Appeals more to the young;
Unlike the martial march of feet
They prefer a barefoot tongue. 

But like a shoelace binds its boot,
Constraining where the foot can move,
But making more productive steps:
Rhyme and meter have the same effect.

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Explanation

Dippin’ my toe into some hot water here with this contentious poetry topic. This kind of topic sows discord in a room of poets. People build theoretical skyscrapers with free or traditional verse—but never both—at their foundations. Many poets have lived and died without ever writing the opposite.

The speaker in this poem says that free verse poetry is more appealing to young poets—by young he basically means “not from before the 20th c.” There were poets in the mid 20th who wrote in meter but I understand that all of them save Auden were idiots.¹

The speaker, in stz. 2, goes on to compare traditional poetry to a well-tied boot. The foot is less free, but it walks better. Constraint improves the poem.

The poem is punning, throughout, on metrical feet and the human foot. How could I resist!

Lesson / argument

I am of the opinion that people should write both. I actually started with free verse and wrote it for years. Perhaps my first three or four hundred poems were entirely free verse.

As you have probably noticed, that is not the case in this newsletter. I think that I have actually done the best work of my short career in meter. Rhyme is less important to me, but nevertheless has its place in my opinion. 

Neither do I think people should write traditional verse rather than free, nor do I think you’re better off starting with one rather than the other. But I do think that you learn about yourself as a writer by trying both. 

I have found that my weaknesses were more visible to me when I switched to metrical poems. One weakness was writing extremely complex subject matter, which I talked about in last week’s newsletter. 

When I switched over to traditional verse, because I was so challenged by the actual formation of metrical feet and sensible arrangements like quatrains, I had to choose simple subject matter. I had cornered myself into describing trivialities like taking a walk, or having a cup of coffee. 

Any topics rarer than the most quotidian made for illegible poems. This has inevitably led me to write poems that are easier to understand. 

It will be a challenge to switch back to free verse again. Yet I will not waver when the time is right.

Further reading:

For a great investigation into the use of constraint in art, see the film The Five Obstructions (2003) by Jørgen Leth & Lars von Trier, which I watched with my friend Monroe.

Poem stats (scansion)

Two quatrains

Iambic 

Number of feet per line: 4344 4445

Rhyme scheme: ABAB CCDD

1. Update: since writing this, I read a book by Colm Tóibín which alleges that Auden, also, was an idiot.