Like Heather, I find one of the great joys of writing poetry is finding the perfect word fit. Sometimes it comes easily, sometimes not. Also like Heather, I have genuinely mourned lines I have discarded because I simply couldn't find the best rhyme, or the most effective way to make my point while fitting the rhythm and metre. Maureen knows only too well how often I tweak the homework prompts because their rhythm is not always easy to insert into a poem (hence the challenge)
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David, I also read free verse as an aid to improving my traditional poetry writing. As you say, the imagery found in good free verse is often lacking in its rhyming cousin - but why should it be so (I ask myself)?
Free verse is often dismissed as incomprehensible by traditional poetry devotees. But it doesn't have to be abstract. In fact, if it is incomprehensible, then it completely misses the point - for surely the objective of any poet is to make the reader see the world through the poet's eye. If the reader is left scratching a puzzled head - then why did the poet waste time and ink? Might as well have cleaned the oven!
My first love is traditional poetry, and I make no apology for that. But the day we let ourselves be blinkered into a tunnel-vision view of the poetic world is the day we stop learning. Then we might as well book our 6 foot plot!
By the way Neville, some of us do write sonnets, villanelles, cinquains, rubaiyats, English sextets, acrostics, concrete poems and even the odd limerick! We just don't admit to it very often
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Cheers
Shelley