It may already be clear in
my work, but for the record,
I never really liked
free verse.
That stuff for me didn’t feel like poetry. It was like writing a normal sentence, say, something you would find in an essay or a novel or a newspaper and then hit
RETURN
in random places
to single out
words
and phrases
so intellectuals who read your work and give you feedback can say something like
Poignant!
Riveting!
Compelling!
and all those other words that don’t really mean a thing anymore, as millions of other works have been
described
that
way.
I like it when there’s rhyme and rhythm
Shakespeare’s sonnets have that in them.
Meter, measure, otherwise
no good verse is worth the price.
Then one day I read a poem,
one as free as verse can be
and it spoke to my heart like
no other I’ve read and I
didn’t even notice what it lacked until
I wiped the tears from my eyes.
This is poetry, I said, oh but where is the rhyme? Alas, I have turned into one of those who find sense
in hitting
RETURN
for no grammatical
or syntactical
or rational
reason.
What is poetry then, if not rhyme?
Who cares for labels, I don’t have time
But whoever it was that set it free
has made a happy fool of me.