Poetics and Poetry Discussion

If I understand what you are saying Anna, free verse is not poetry. Is that correct? If you say free verse is not poetry, than most poets today are not poets at all. " It is interesting that T.S. Elliot, author of one of the twentieth Century's most representative poems " The Waste Land, " famously said in a 1917 essay that free verse: " is a battle cry of freedom, and there is no freedom in art." He concludes, " there is only good verse, bad verse, and chaos." But guess what: Eliot himself wrote free verse. So what did he mean? Basically, Eliot meant that free verse shouldn't be considered sloppy or easy poetry. Free verse is poetry without form, written without rhyme or meter, but it requires the same kind of attention to detail in order to work well. free verse is not just carelessly written verse. It succeeds when it carefully evades or approximates patterns. (Know the rules first, then break them.) Free verse won't be effective if you simply spew words onto the page haphazardly. Today, free verse is the norm, and the poets who succeed tend to be those who have studied technique and mastered it before moving on to free verse." Mehta, Diane " How to write poetry" Spark Publishing 2008 NY