If I were the betting kind, I would say this entire post is a response to our previous exchange.

Patrick, don’t bet your life. It’s the same the thing I’ve been saying on this blog for two years.

(maybe two generations after?)

What? You think I’m an old man?

All I ever saw, everywhere, around every corner and in every nook and cranny, was free verse.

You probably grew up in better circumstances than I did. I wasn’t exposed to contemporary poetry until college, which would have been when you were “growing up”.

typical of baby-boomer self-aggrandizement.

Except that I’m not a baby boomer, or don’t consider myself one. Depending on who you read, the boomer generation ended with 1964, 1965, or 1966. I think I’ve seen it most often as 1964.

Vanguard is defined as “the foremost division or the front part of an army; advance guard”. It’s hard to be the vanguard when almost every other poet in the English speaking world is vanguarding. From my perspective, you’re no different than the chest thumping Victorian Poet who declares that rhymed verse “has always been an avant form, and that blah, blah, blah…”

I think you missed the part where I said

The disciples of this movement still consider themselves the harbingers of something new despite the fact that experimental literature has not really caught on with the general public, alive though it has been for 100 years. While the ranks of those practicing in the same vein as early experimenters has grown, the preferred expressions – in literature and the arts – is ingrained in the traditions of the past. Let’s not divorce ourselves from reality.

Yes, free verse is no longer a vanguard movement in the strictest sense of the word, however, poets who are on the vanguard of poetic progression today are writing in the free verse vein. That free verse in its most popular expressions today is suffering from the same malady as Victorian schlock is a topic that I was planning a blog post about. You beat me to the punch.

For Pete’s sake, Allen, free verse, by definition, doesn’t rhyme. If it rhymes, it’s not free verse. At best, it’s a deviation from free verse.

So what would you call it then? It isn’t metered. There’s not metrical pattern. If everything, in your words, is either verse (metered) or prose (unmetered) then this must be “lineated proose”, which is your definition of free verse.

Wikipedia: Free verse – also known as vers libre – is a term describing various styles of poetry that are written without using a strict rhyme scheme…

Wikipedia? That’s the best you can do? OK, let’s use it as our reference: strict rhyme scheme.

Cultural Dictionary: Verse without regular meter or rhyme.

In other words, blank verse is free verse? But it has meter. Which is it? Verse or “lineated prose?”

Yes we did. And there are trochaic sentences in Stephen King.

But they aren’t planned trochaic sequences. Stephen King doesn’t force you to read his prose according to a set rhythm.

What this tells you (or at least someone who isn’t willfully obstinate) is that the difference between prose and free verse is largely, if not wholly, typographical.

I wouldn’t exactly say typographical. Visual perhaps. Or musical even. Prose and poetry just don’t read the same, excepting of course those poets who read their free verse as if it were prose despite the breaks that they give it. Honestly, I see where you’re coming from. But if you judge every free verse poem on the basis of what you read in the majority of journals then I think you’re casting an unfair light on the whole issue. There are very fine poets writing in free verse whose poetry would be done an injustice if you delineated it as you suggest doing. I don’t think the test has merit.

That would be cool. T.S. Eliot did that.

That’s why I like Eliot. One of my heroes. When I grow up I want to be like Thomas Stearns.

Your scansion of “Kubla Khan” is wrong, either because you refuse to acknowledge how poets used elision within a metrical pattern, or because you’re unaware of it.

I admit, I’m no expert on scansion. I could use some brushing up.

The metrical variances Coleridge uses (which may be why it confuses you) are actually closer to that of the Elizabethans than the Romantics.

Well, that’s interesting considering that Coleridge is considered one of the founders of Romanticism in poetry. There’s no doubt he was influenced by the Elizabethans. He thought highly of Shakespeare. But no Elizabethan wrote like Coleridge.

To call the poem free verse is just wrong.

I don’t know if you should call it free verse or not. I’m much less concerned with that as I am other things. I’ve heard it referred to as free verse, probably for the same reasons I’m commenting on the irregular metrical sequences of the poem. The poem has no established pattern, which I find attractive. It makes frequent changes in rhythm and rhyme as I have pointed out.

Tell me I’m wrong, but show me where. You can’t look at 8-syllable lines followed by 10-syllable lines in complete sequences and tell me this is regular meter with elision. I’d like to see you defend that.

Go ahead and scan it on your blog. I’d like to see a real professional scan “Kubla Khan”.

//Free verse has always been an avant form. It is, despite its growth into a tradition of its own, by nature a vanguard instrument for it relies upon a rebellion of the senses. It always has, always will be.//

Keep telling yourself that. Maybe it’s age-related, but I grew up with free verse. I’m the generation after yours (maybe two generations after?). All I ever saw, everywhere, around every corner and in every nook and cranny, was free verse. The notion that free verse is, in and of itself, (and will always be) a “vanguard instrument” is just navel gazing claptrap – typical of baby-boomer self-aggrandizement. Vanguard is defined as “the foremost division or the front part of an army; advance guard”. It’s hard to be the vanguard when almost every other poet in the English speaking world is vanguarding. From my perspective, you’re no different than the chest thumping Victorian Poet who declares that rhymed verse “has always been an avant form, and that blah, blah, blah…”

//So let us now look at my poem, “When I Come Home”, a rhymed free verse poem.//

For Pete’s sake, Allen, free verse, by definition, doesn’t rhyme. If it rhymes, it’s not free verse. At best, it’s a deviation from free verse.

Wikipedia: Free verse – also known as vers libre – is a term describing various styles of poetry that are written without using a strict rhyme scheme…

Cultural Dictionary: Verse without regular meter or rhyme.

Britannica: Free verse is a style of poetry based on the rhythms of speech and imagery rather than a set meter or rhyme scheme.

//In this case, it simply proves that there is no metrical pattern, but we knew that. Didn’t we? Still, did you notice the two-line trochaic sequence?//

Yes we did. And there are trochaic sentences in Stephen King.

//It’s pretty straightforward, really. Those eleven lines. Couldn’t they just be written as prose and achieve the same effect?//

But in what follows, you still don’t seem to get it. Free verse is “lineated prose”. No one is denying that. *I’m* not denying that. If you take any given prose paragraph and lineate it, few, and arguably none, could differentiate the free verse that started out as prose from the prose that started out as free verse. That’s the crux of the matter. What this tells you (or at least someone who isn’t willfully obstinate) is that the difference between prose and free verse is largely, if not wholly, typographical.

//I look forward to reading more free verse that incorporates metered sequences in the midst of freer lines. //

That would be cool. T.S. Eliot did that. Other poets have tried it. Stevens tried that in his later poems.

Your scansion of “Kubla Khan” is wrong, either because you refuse to acknowledge how poets used elision within a metrical pattern, or because you’re unaware of it. The meter of Kuhbla Khan, in these 11 lines, is quite regular. The next sequence is one you also get wrong. The metrical variances Coleridge uses (which may be why it confuses you) are actually closer to that of the Elizabethans than the Romantics. To call the poem free verse is just wrong. But my telling you so will probably get no where. Maybe I should take a look at it at my own site? God forbid someone should walk away from your post thinking that Coleridge wrote free verse…