It's so true...

[Zoom]

Crap...now I have to go write a book made of numerical expressions.

(From SMBC)

[Raphael]

I love it. One of my friends can't stand freeverse.................. We're almost not friends : P

[Genesis]

XD fantastic

I only write freeverse... I don't mind using a form to guide me, but sticking to syllable counts and patterns rigidly often makes for a forced and rigid sounding poem, which makes it a waste of time... another problem i have with poetry forms is how they squelch creativity. I mean, honestly, if you can't even come up with your own pattern, how can you come up with anything else?
I only reason I would have someone use poetry forms was if they weren't quite sure what they were doing. "The code is more like guidelines rather than actual rules."
Then again, some people just like the fun of the challege of making things fit together like a puzzle.

Sorry about the mini-rant, but I had to speak my mind.

[GiannaRose]

I can't stand free verse either. (sorry, guys.)

[Raphael]

Tch. You can't look at poetry line by line. It's the whole thing that needs to flow and relate to itself. It's remarkable how alike prose and poetry are; poetry just has more freedom with grammar, and detail.

[GiannaRose]

Rarely does free verse "flow". The rhyme and the rhythm in poetry is what makes it beautiful.

[Zoom]

I'm sort of torn on this topic. On the one hand, I appreciate when a poet can say something nice, and say it IN RHYME, like it turns the intensity up a notch, but there's a lot of free verse and mixed and what have you that's equally intense for other reasons.
So I guess really I just like good poetry of any kind.

The thing with free verse, though, it that it tends to attract a lot of people who make shitty poetry, because they figure, "cool, I can be all deep and not even have to work that hard", because they think all there is to it is some uncapitalized phrases in bizarre order. (It's like 'artists' saying that what amounts to doodling with paint is actually "abstract". Drives me nuts. It's like have you ever looked up the definition?)

i
am not what you think
but
i am more than i am
so
don't look at me like that
look
and see


OMG SO PROFOUND

[sapphire]

I kind of like free verse. Good free verse, anyway. There's always not-so-good stuff out there.
Rhyming is really, really hard to do well. I agree with Zoom that it turns the intensity up, though.

You guys should see the poetry some of my classmates turn out. It's... interesting. They basically string together a bunch of big words. It's all showing off. (Actually, this school - and those people - are what turned me off writing poetry.)

[Spectre]

I dunno if I'll ever understand what makes a poem 'good'. I hope there IS a standard, however difficult-to-describe it may be, that is applied to stuff like this. Like when certain poems are regarded as "The Best in American Literary History", or whatever, I want to know why. I don't actually have a problem with many poems (I think the ones I've read are pretty good, actually), but most 'good' poems seem so wildly different that I have to wonder what they have in common at all.

[Zoom]

Yeah, it seems like it's more undescribable-x-factor than some sort of standard.
Just now I was thinking of some things that usually make a good poem, but every time I thought of something, I thought of a poem that was exactly the opposite.

Another thing is that I sometimes can't tell if a poem is crappy, or if I just don't get it.

[sapphire]

I think "good" is a matter of opinion. In prose, too, but most certainly in poetry.
Some people like poetry that doesn't make sense but sounds pretty, some people insist that it have some kind of coherency; some people like rhyming, some don't; etc.

[Genesis]

Moral of the story: each to their own.