There is no such thing as free verse

>So, which point is it?
You tell me. Your comment implies that there is a point to rhymed poetry which you are aware of, which is not present in unrhymed poetry.

I just took a big stinky shit. That's poetry.

Are you me? Wiping as we speak.

rhyme isn't the only way something can sound musical or poetic - obviously metre and rhythm plays a big part in this but vowel and consonant sounds can still be used in a non-rhyming way to make something musical, which is something Whitman employs a lot. Whitman also uses repetition and obvs the kind of repetition he uses mimics that of the kjv, but this also makes it sound more musical and poetic even when it doesn't rhyme

>Your comment implies that there is a point to rhymed poetry which you are aware of, which is not present in unrhymed poetry.
Yes, that it sounds good, that you enjoy the repetition of the same sounds which are where you expected them to be, that they become idioms or popular songs, etc

Thank you

/thread

I understand what you are saying, and in some ways I agree, but I also believe that a distinction between prose and poetry is important. Prose is defined as any writing which is not poetry, so it would follow that prose could never be poetry and poetry could never truly be prose.

His post doesn't even address the OP's statement.

There's no such thing as straight OP.

Traditionally, poetry was built around some rhythmic pattern. Rhyme is only one of the tools that are available to a poet, and it's actually a relatively recent one (really taking off in European poetry only in late middle ages). Read about the theory of versification. The essence of traditional poetry is within each verse and not merely at the ends of the verses - the syllabic, accentual and/or quantitative patterns (metres) define each verse.

>The only thing I can't think of is the tempo, is it that?
Tempo is not an element of poetry, since it is never determined by the poet but by the reader's judgement. (Unlike poetry, there's music, where the composer explicitly states "andante", "presto", etc. or even gives the exact metronome marking, so to a lesser or greater degree that aspect of art is under the author's control.) You were probably thinking of rhythm? As I explain above, yes, in fact the rhythm within the verse is more elementary to poetry than the rhyme.
Free verse poetry is an another matter. If you're speaking from ignorance, as you say, it would be good for you to read at least some introductory anthology of poetry to get a basic grasp of the topic, because without a frame of reference it is pointless to talk about this.

A word's origin does not define its current meaning. Besides, if you're going to literally stick to the original meaning, then filmmaking and musicmaking and craftmanship is also poetry, which makes the term useless.
In practice in Greece, poiesis was what was written in verse. Which even included philosophy (e.g. Empedocles). Aristotle deals with this in the first chapter of Poetics very intelligently. So, you're not really respecting the Greek sense of the word.

Nothing he wrote denies the distinction between prose and poetry.

Okay, so why are you asking me questions you have answers to? If you think the point of poetry is to sound good, then the point of unrhymed poetry is to sound good.

Who cares? It is a shitty statement, he doesn't even explain why he thinks that way

>If you think the point of poetry is to sound good
Not of poetry, of rhyme. That's why I asked about unrhymed poetry. But don't worry, another user has already explained it

Not him, but the point of rhyme is not to sound good. Rhyme is form and you cannot separate the words from the form. When a poet uses a slant rhyme, an off rhyme, or foregoes rhyme completely, the reader has to find out why and the reason is often found in the words.

Thanks for your exposition, now I understand it better

>Read about the theory of versification
Which are your recommendations?

>You were probably thinking of rhythm?
Yes I was, I don't know anything about poetry nor music theory

>If you're speaking from ignorance, as you say, it would be good for you to read at least some introductory anthology of poetry to get a basic grasp of the topic, because without a frame of reference it is pointless to talk about this
Okay I will, thank you again

Can you explain it further? What are some of the reasons you talk about?

>Which are your recommendations?
Tbh I don't know much specifically about anglophone versification, so I only ever rec two books: Fussell's Poetic Meter and Poetic form, and Attridge's Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction.

Sure! Here's an example of a poem by Yeats which demonstrates this very well.

Reprisals
to Major Robert Gregory

Some nineteen German planes, they say,
You had brought down before you died.
We called it a good death. Today
Can ghost or man be satisfied?
Although your last exciting year
Outweighed all other years, you said,
Though battle joy may be so dear
A memory, even to the dead,
It chases other thought away,
Yet rise from your Italian tomb,
Flit to Kiltartan Cross and stay
Till certain second thoughts have come
Upon the cause you served, that we
Imagined such a fine affair:
Half-drunk or whole-mad soldiery
Are murdering your tenants there.
Men that revere your father yet
Are shot at on the open plain.
Where may new-married women sit
And suckle children now? Armed men
May murder them in passing by
Nor law nor parliament take heed.
Then close your ears with dust and lie
Among the other cheated dead.

Notice how this poem begins with dead-on perfect rhymes for the first three quatrains, then from there it gets a little shaky. "We" and "soldiery" aren't quite off-rhymes, but they're not perfect either. Then "yet" and "sit" along with "plain" and "men" are definitely slant rhymes. Then see he foregoes rhyme entirely with "heed" and "dead" in the final quatrain. Why does he do this? Well let's look back to the center of the poem where this entropy began. We have these two lines:
>Flit to Kiltartan Cross and stay
>Till certain second thoughts have
Yeats is a master of assonance, "Kiltartan Cross" and "certain thoughts" would form perfect assonance, if it weren't for the word "second" disrupting it. Well, a "second thought" is literally a disruption, and from there the perfect rhyme is completely disrupted for the rest of the poem. Isn't that kinda cool?

Yeah, rules and standards are oppressive. Just do whatever you want and call it poetry. Anyone who disagrees is ignorant.

>cheated dead
Why do you think the dead in this poem are "cheated"?

>Yeah, rules and standards are oppressive. Just do whatever you want and call it poetry. Anyone who disagrees is ignorant.
Spotted a pseud who don't read poetry.

Fuck rhymes. Free verse is the shit. Leave the rhymes for lullabies

metrics you retard. depending on whether you have a syllable-timed or stressed-timed language, meter works differently. greek and latin were syllable timed (long and short syllables), so between the line-by-line syllable count and the pattern of long and short syllables you get the meter of the poem, which distinguishes it as verse.
blank verse and free verse are very different and tbqh free verse is kind of gay

because they didn't get to rhyme

Caedmon’s Hymn emphasizes alliteration rather than rhyme as its chief sonic device.

Harold Bloom on Whitman's "free" verse 1/2

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>because they didn't get to rhyme
KEK. alright,

This is great, unfortunatelly I can't find a pdf of this book.

two are better than none so ty i'll read them

>Isn't that kinda cool?
it is more than cool, it is amazing. And your explanation wonderful thanks

ill check it

i dont understand this and , i hope i will someday when i know more about poetry

>it's good because it is good

At last I truly see.

It's on libgen, it's title is "The Best Poems of the English Language". "The Art of Reading Poetry" is the introductory essay.

>i dont understand this and , i hope i will someday when i know more about poetry
Don't worry, there isn't much to understand at all. Bloom's critical writing has very little substance, he just makes grand metaphors about how great is the stuff that he likes.

Several months ago an user posted a thread begging for help with the essay, he wanted to get into poetry and it was supposed to be his intro. He was completely disoriented by Bloom's terminological wankery and namedropping. The text is neither a natural introduction, nor does it offer anything new to a more knowledgeable reader. I have no idea who it was written for other than for Bloom's own ego.

It's working well for me

Maybe it helps being reasonably well-read in the prose canon and Shakespeare already

Tis true. My verses are enslaved by passion.

Bloom’s approach is not academic in nature. It’s more of a conversation with someone who loves the subject. It’s perfect what it’s worth.

Then it (The Art of Reading Poetry) is obviously not for the user asking for an intro, if he clearly does not even know what e.g. iambic pentameter is.
I like Bloom's spirit too, when his love of literature is on display. But not as a critic whose words I'd dissect.

Then see he foregoes rhyme entirely with "heed" and "dead" in the final quatrain
Heed and dead do rhyme if you pronounce them "hee-uhd" and "dee-uhd", it could be based off of an accent after all.

>Then it (The Art of Reading Poetry) is obviously not for the user asking for an intro, if he clearly does not even know what e.g. iambic pentameter is.
I posted it in response to the OP, a picture of Walt Whitman and the statement "there is no such thing as free verse".

Bloom's critique is so unfair to Poe lmao like ofc it's "predictable" he's WRITING IN METER

This, verse is always imprisioned in language.

Bloom never misses a chance to antagonize Poe.

no

>crack open the digital shakespeare
>first sonnet says NIGGARding

ummmmmmmmmm UH OH! SHAKESPEARE BROS?

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Dipshits not knowing what meter is and thinking that free verse means not rhyming is what triggers me about these threads, not people disrespecting Whitman or Eliot or whoever.

Please educate yourselves:
youtube.com/watch?v=S13Tg3RAUW4

My recommendation would be to start with the ABC of Reading. Pound for all his faults, was actually a very good teacher. He explains everything very well, and its where I learned how to read poetry.

>Start video
>He starts reading iambic poetry as "dum-DUM"
stopped there. You posted this video to trigger poet-anons, and give purposefully bad information. That is the only explanation, other than you being a complete brainlet of course.

Yeats wrote this poem after WWI and the Easter Rising. Major Robert Gregory was the son of Lady Gregory and was killed in an air battle. After the war, Britain employed the "Black and Tans" in Ireland as "peacekeepers," but these "soldiers" were really nothing more than thuggish mercenaries. The "cheated dead" are the families who served the Gregory family and were murdered by the Black and Tans.

I assure you it is not based on an accent. This is a very purposeful deviation from rhyme as I demonstrated.

Well. You have a point. Poetry has some patterns. Prose will create its own --- if it sucessed. From that POV prose its hardcore, poetry is soft lesbian.

This. You can freeverse as long as you care being Whitman.