I don't understand poetry, /lit/. I get rhyming and the whole syllable-focused lyricism of some poetry, but I don't understand "freeform" poetry. Why do you move on to the next line, why is it not just written as prose?
Pic unrelated.
FUCK THE SYSTEM MAN
>>7609554
It's to make one sound artsy, intelligent, and important. The best-written and recited free verse allows the reader (or listener) to practically smell the rancid machiatos coming from the poet's asshole.
>>7609554
>but I don't understand "freeform" poetry.
Let's get this clear
Most "free verse" poets who were good also didn't really write free verse
Whitman wrote long lines that weren't in iambic pentameter but they are incredibly music and the rhythm is memorable from only a single read out loud. He's a formal poet.
Ezra Pound wrote in "free verse" in that he played it by ear. Music in the same was as Whitman. Even messed around with quantitative meter. Very musical.
TS Eliot had "le ghost of meter" in his poems. It shows. His verse is musical.
It's only once you get into the group that worshiped WC Williams and his successors that you find shitty free verse.
Read Whitman out loud though. When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd is incredibly lyrical.
> "freeform" poetry
as I've just shown through example it can be done extremely well. Though most people just use it as an excuse to write shitty poetry that would be shitty even if it were in meter.
>>7609570
hello reddit STEMlord
>>7609627
In what reality is any of that reddit-esque?
I'll give you STEMlord.
I think all STEM students ought to be murdered.
>>7609554
focus on the imagery. read it as a mutual free association. let your mind wander in orbit around the words.
>>7609743
How does one even write something like that, though? Like why does the author suddenly decide that it's time to start a new line?
>>7610219
How does any other author decide to start a new line, or paragraph, or chapter?
There are 'conventional' places to use them, and unconventional ones. You follow a whim, and then peel off the excess.
You may as well ask: "How do people paint abstract art?" The answer is much the same.
>>7609570
>It's to make one sound artsy, intelligent, and important. The best-written and recited free verse allows the reader (or listener) to practically smell the rancid machiatos coming from the poet's asshole.
This guy gets it.
>>7610236
I don't mean why as in the reason behind, but ratger why as in what specific mechanic is being used to make the statement in the way it's being made. So like, with prose there's a logical basis for concluding a paragraph, as it completes an argument or period of time, but in the case of freeform poetry it's like the author is starting a new line completely arbitrarily. And also, why express it in broken, stunted bursts if you can simply convert it to prose and have a totality in your meaning.
>>7610256
>Why do anything other than prose?
I admire the sentiment, and cherished it myself during my undergrad years.
I suppose it's like Jazz - the holistic properties of the work, converging around a particular emotional response, find a nebulous freedom that simply does not exist in rigid artforms.
You are, as always, welcome to call a poem 'shit', but I'll say this much - if your days are filled with a lust for concrete meaning, the humanities may not be your highest calling.
Thing is, I ask because I'm interested in writing myself.
>>7610312
well, read a lot of poetry (you should read at least 40-100 poets from every century since the 11th AD, and all the greeks and romans) and figure it all out yourself. You only learn about poetry by reading and writing it.
There's so much difference throughout the history of poetry. Poetry from even Shakespeare looks different from that of the Metaphysicals. The Metaphysicals are radically different from the romantics and augustans.
>>7609554
It's not really about any of that. The form is just to keep it in place. Poetry is about the metaphor.
What's that pretentious shit people do where it's just some long monologue they recite on stage and call it poetry? Is it the same as free verse?
>>7610600
> 40-100 poets
Yeah nah, not everyone has a free decade to read entire works of countless poets since the 11th AD (chain-reading can be dangerous.)
Op just read at least 200-300 poems from every 50 years since the 11th AD.
>>7610609
That would be slam poetry. Pretty much all slam poetry is written in free verse, but a pretty minuscule fraction of free verse poetry could be categorized as slam stuff. The delivery, performance, etc. are also important in slam, but if you're one of those "it's just a monologue lol not real poetry" people I doubt you care that much
>>7610613
well, a fucking wannabe poet better have more than a free decade to read the history of what he'll be fucking writing
he should have a free lifetime
>>7610655
> NEET meme
You forgot the smug pepe picture, NEETposter.
>>7609570
this.
