THE FREE VERSE MOVEMENT IN AMERICA,

WITH AN EXPERIMENT IN VERSE

APPROVED:

VN a.U UK

Major Professor

/!A *

Minor Processor

f . s Director of th^ Department of English

Dean of the Graduate School

SHE FREE VERSE MOVEMENT IN AMERICA,

WITH AN EXPERIMENT IN VERSE

THESIS

Presented to the Graduate Council of the

North Texas State University in Partial

Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

By

Jan Epton Seale, B. A.

Denton, Texas

August, 1969

TABLE 0.P CONTENTS

Page

PART I. WALT WHITMAN, AMY LOWELL, THE MODERNS:

OH mm VERSE 1

PART IT. AN BXPERIIvlENT IN VERSE 21

Sonnet . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Bightride 25

Tercets: Mutation . . . . .24

Uncertainty 25

Tallica: Carbon Black Factory at Night , . . . . 26

Doublegangers . 2?

Last Tuesday . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Shack 50

Concerted Effort 31

L a u.1 o xi fc.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3

To a V7oiaan V.'iio Pleased King Solomon . . . . . .34

In Late Day .35

Ballad of the Pueblo:1968 . . . . . . . . . . .36

Rhetoric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Syllables . . . . . . . . . . . .42

Crab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Snow . 47

The Insects

Songs of Senility . . . . ,49

Three Poems .For Children

1. The Dark . 52

2. Rain . . 54

5. Haiku: The Wind . , 55

Terza Kimaj To A Friend Who Died Somewhat Unexpectedly 56

Nuns 53

3ye Postures . , . . . . *59

To A Boy T'fho Loot His First Tooth Today , . , . ,61

Palm Readings 55

Spenserian Stanza: Larry . , ,66

Three Conditions of Mind . . . » ,57

Blood Hain . 70

Haiku: The Seasons . . 71

To My Father . . . , - 2

BIBLIOGRAPHY .73

2V

PART I

WAIT miTFAS, AMY LOY/ifiLL, I'HE MODERNS:

OH FREE VERSE

The mention of free verse today seldom inspires

any healthy controversy among conversationalists. Neverthe-

less, universal agreement on what free verse means continues

to elude the definition-makers. ine history of the free

verse movement perhaps supports the surviving' multiplicity

of definitions. f.ehe term "free verse5* is a literal trans-

lation of the French "vers libre." Francis Vxele-G-riffin,

in the preface to his Joles (1888-89), wrote, "le vers

®3Lt MJSZS.*" giving a label to the type of verse being

written in Prance at that time. G-uotave ICahn, Andre' Spire,

and Francis Jaiumes were among the French poets of the

poiiod wno worked to develop new controls for this kind of

verse in waich accent was said to be governed only by the

-•-hyLhifls of speech and the emotion of the speaker rather

than by preconceived regularity of stress patterns."*"

Bug to assume that, because it was called vers ljj.bre,

Ihe PiO veinent originated in France is • analogous to saying

that no one ever ate beef until it was called filet mignon.

lfa«y ><ilson Allen, f,Free Verse," Bncyclopee dia Vol, IX (Chicago, 1968). Bl

The widespread use of the term "vers t^Dre" denote a

kind of poetry which, using language rhythmically, mani-

pulates "accent, stress, and cadence in such a way as to 2

create recurrent patterns of emphasis'9 is a happy marriage

between the VIe s t e r n afxinity for a xashionable Bjcench

phrase and that particular phenomenon in the history of

poetry which had heen in need of a name for many years.

How many years is a question of literary judgment.

William Carlos Williams cites Greek and Latin "art prose

medieval tropes and sequences, and the Germanic tradition

of alliterative verse as obvious forerunners to poetic

forms which depended on something "other than traditional •k

quantitative or acccntual verse." The Bible is often

referred to as an example of early free v e r s e I n the

pre-Romantic period, Macpherson's Ossian Poems and Chris-

topher Smart's Jubilate A#no showed innovations pointing

toward the free verse movement. In Germany, Klopstock's

Ifessias, Goethe's Frornetheua, and JTovalia' Hymen an die

Kacht reflected new thought on form. In the nineteenth "Robin Skelton, "Poetry," Bncyclopaedia Britannica,

Vol. XVIII (Chicago, 1968). _ 3 -'William Carlos Williams, "Free Verse," Kncyclopsdla

2.1! Silsi Poetics, edited by Alex Preminger'TpFince'ion, New Jersey, 196517™™

A'~I>ee Richard Ilayman, "Pree 'Verse For Sale," The Writer, 1X11 (September, 1949), 302. ™~" — '

century, Blake, Arnold, Lamb, and De Quincey experimented

with free Terse forms in England$ Holderlin, Heine, and

Nietzsche narrowed the gap between prose and poetry in

Germany; said Bertrand, Hugo, and Baudelaire in France

made important contributions to the movement in their

manners of writing. By the end of the nineteenth century,

the French symbolists had enhanced the position of free

verse on the continent, and in England and America, the

writing of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Y/alt Whitman showed

the possibilities for the new form.

Xb has been argued tnat free verse is the characteristic

verse form for the twentieth century. Rilke, Apollinaire,

b-5,-John Ferse> William Carlos Williams, T.S. iiliot, and

.ifera Pound -are among those poets who have used it exten-

sively during the present age. it is notable thatthose

.English and African poets who used free verse most, up to

the raid-twentieth century, were involved in or influenced

by the Iroagiot movement as formulated by T,$, HuIme and

J . f e r a pound between about 1905 and 1915.5 Though the Imagists

</e.re concerned primarily with concrete terras and brittle

^mo^ioa, one of the tenets of their program was *»to compose

in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the

metronome.'*6

5 Williams, p. 289.

6 As quoted by Allen, p. 854.

Shortly after the onset of Imagism, the free verse

movement branched off into two distinct segments, one led

by Pound and the other by Amy.Lowell. rC .S. Eliot embraced

Pound's formal prescription of the vers llbre technique *

Lowell's influence is still to be observed in the techniques

7

of Sandburg, Williams, Marianne Moore, and Wallace Stevens.

The limits of free verse are being explored once more

in the sixties by many young poets in their "organic poetry," 8

"naked poetry," or "open forms."

What, then, can be- said to delineate a forra which

King Solomon used in the Song of Songs and which Allen

Ginsberg uses in!SHov/ls.s? Very little. As Gay Wilson Allen

puts it, "Free verse is a- prosodic term used in so many Q

ways that it has almost lost any useful meaning." One

thing seems clear, however, and that is that "free verse,"

"vers llbre"naiced poetry," and "open form" deny the

X>oetically scannable foot, depending instead on other forms

of rhythmic unity. William Carlos Williams states it thuss The crux of the question is measure. In free verse, the measure lists been loosened to give more play to vocabulary and syntax-—hence, to the mind in its excursions. The bracket of the customary foot has been expanded so that more syllables, words, or phrases can be admitted into its confines. 1'he new unit thus created may be called the "variable foot". . .

10

Void., p. 855. 8-'Naked Poetry: Recent American poetry in Open fforms,

edited Fy" Stepnen "Berg an3 "Ro^OTtrKezey Cl^dia>iapoliS ' ancT Hew York, 1969), p. xi.

9Allen, p. 854. 10Williams, p. 290.

5

.Free verse skips along, from generation to genera-

tion, changing garbs and masks, sometimes only faintly

resembling its latest guise. Perhaps then, in dealing

• with a term which "has almost lost any useful meaning,,r

it is best to confine oneself to particulars. It is as

John Ciardi wrote in the Saturday Review after a rather

particulari aed discussion of poetry: "And there, boys

and girls, is not a definition (a definition in your terms

appearing to be something you may then stop thinking about),

but the opposite of a definition (which is to say, some-

thing to think about, when you acquire anything to think

IX

with)." ' Walt Whitman, Amy Lowell, and the poets of the

sixties constitute "something to think about" in consider-

ing the evolution of free verse in this country. They

cone at auspicious times in the making of poetic concepts.

They are innovators. And they are vocal. A sampling of

their pronouncements provides vantage points from which

fco view the grow oh of the free verse trend in American

prosody„

Tnere is still controversy over whether Whitman wrote

fj.ee verse. It is true that the first edition of Leaves

°i '^n it appeared in July, 1855, preceded the

ueignt of the French vers 1 ibre movement by some twenty-*five

,/eais, it is equally true that his prose writings do hot

11 . _ ~ 1

Ci&rdi 9 'J,..:hat Is Your Definition of Poetry*" ISJiew, XL IX, Pt. 3 (Sept. 17, 1966), 11.

delineate a "free verse" form as ouch. One critic writes

that Whitman*a poetry, since it is not ""based on the

recurrence of stress accent in regular, measurable pattern"

12

is inaccurately described when it is called free verse.

This argument presupposes that the only rhythm with which

free verse is concerned is the sc amiable or unscannable

foot, not the broader rhythms of parallelism and repeti-

tion of ideas or grammatical units.

Joseph Epstein writes that "Whitman had a hard time

winning a following . . . because he used free verse rather 13

than rhymed or regularly organized metre." Other critics,

equally eminent, feel that Whitman's use of rhythm "as a

fluid instrument of verse" demonstrated a new free form

with possibilities outside the range of conventional

p a t t e r n s I f , then, one speaks only of free verse as

the variaole foot, with little or no rhyme, he probably

excludes V/bixman. But if he considers free verse as having

within its definition a new freedom in selecting subject

matter, a vital, unencumbered way of looking at experience, 1 ? "~Williams, p. 288. 13 _ Jooepn iips teln, "American Literature ," Encyclopaedia

brrcanmca, Vol. I (Chicago, 1968). — —

'•Pioneers of a Nov/ Poetry,51 ujhe American Tradition

568)

f dy b e d b y Sculiey BradTeyT^l^Hard^'ro^ oy, and .u. huclson Long (Hew York, 1956), II, 14, 1

and. a rhythmic juxtaposing of ideas and of grammatical

units, he finds Ylalt Whitman very much the vers librlst.

Whitman's innovations, in such poems as "There Y/as A

Child 'Vent Forth" or "I Celebrate Myself," show a great

deal of personal freedom, hut not license. He was far

from advocating slovenly, formless poetry. He wrote in

.An American Primer, "To make a perfect composition in

words is more than to make the "best building or machine,

or the best statue, or picture.—It shall be the glory of

the greatest masters to make perfect compositions in v/ord3

In an essay first written anonymously, he tried to show

that what was most perfectly ordered and v-hat was most

contrived v/ero nob necessarily synonymous • He held that

"natural poetry" had "perfect simplicity and proportion,"

and that a "grand poem" must have as its requisite

* originality, and the average and superb beauty of the

ensemble#" If a poet would only remember this lav/, Whitman

wrote, that men would not "uake anything ungraceful or

mean, any more than any emanation of nature is.

15 """""" — , _n An American Primer, edited by Horace Traubel (3os-

quoted in ofte Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman, edi^ea by Louis Untermeyer (Hew York,' 1949)7™ppTT8.1™3'2T

K5 ^ V/alt Whitman, "An .English and an American Poet."

essay collected first in In Re Walt m t m a n (1893), quoted 111 Poetry axid Prose, Untermeyer, p. $41»

8

(True to the free verse tradition, Whitman championed.

the common word above the elegant one:

A perfect writer would make words sing, dance, kiss, , do the male and female act, hear children, weep, : "bleed, rage, stab, steal, fire cannon, steer ships,

sack cities, charge with cavalry or infantry, or do • any thing, that man or woman or the natural powers can do.'

He was constantly sniping at Tennyson, whose verse struck

him as "never free and naive poetry. . .the handling of

the rhyme all showing the scholar and conventional gentle-18

ruan." Indeed, Whitman showed somewhat a disdain for

all past literature; "—I think I am done with many of

the words of the past hundred centuries.—I am mad that

oheir poems, bibles, words, still rule and represent the

earth, and are not yet superseded.-— His words are

harsh in criticism of his contemporaries when he envisions

a new generation of American poets "essentially different

f.r.om tne old poets, and from the modern successions of

jinglers and snivellers and fops.51^

In a most interesting essay in which Walt Whitman re-

viewed anonymously the poems of Walt Whitman and said, those

17 An Airier lean Primer, quoted in The Poetry and Prose,

Untermeyer,~p7 5757 """ ~ —•

•'/alt Y/hitman, uPoetry To-day in America,41 originally as "Poetry of the suture," Worth American Review, ('February, .1881), quoted in The Poetry"Hii'd Prose Untermeyer, p. 551 •'

19 . i An American Primer, in Untermeyer, p. 575* I

?0 "An English and an American Poet," in Untermeyer,

p. 54-2. . J '

things which he most wanted to hear said of himself, he

characterized his style in this way:

He [V/liitinan] never presents for perusal a poem ready-made on the old models, and ending when you come to the end of it; hut every sentence and every passage tells of an interior not always seen, and exudes an impalpable something which sticks to him that reads, and pervades and provokes him to tread the half-invisible road where the poet,plike an apparition, is striding fearlessly before.

In delineating the poetry of the future, Whitman was

the harbinger of new forms as well as new subjects:

u the poetry of the future aims at the free expression

of emotion. . .and to arouse and initiate, more than to

define or finish'!22 He commented that "the greatest poet

is not he who has done the best; it is he who suggests

bhe most; he, not all of whose meaning is at first obvious,

and who leaves you much to desire, to explain, to study,

much to complete in your turn."23 in such passages as

these, one sees Whitman not so much the prophet of

the "variable foot5' as the voice of a new spirit embodied

111 Z2££ tho association of the art of poetry with

ihon.co ;;/hich admit fehe to baJ.ity of life---be they magnificent

2} , . „ > PP. 544 -45 .

P2^. lPoe t.ey To-day in America,'} in Ifntormeyer, p. 554.

> p . 555 .

10

or tawdry, lofty or commonplace, philosophical or emotive.

If Walt Whitman was the prophet of the apir.it of

free verse. Amy Lowell was the technician for it. Her

position on 7/alt Whitman as vers 11 prist illustrated her •

narrow concept of the form. In an article about him in

the Yale Review in 192?• (which told more about Miss

Lowell than it did ahout Whitman), she wrote that "Whitman

never had the slightest idea of what cadence is, and 1 think

it doea not take much reading to force the conviction that

he had very little rhythmical sense.5,24 With that pro-

nouncement, she, discounted his influence on the free verse

movement, concluding that the moderns "owe very little of

their form to Whitman.-'25 To her, Whitman had taken metrical

verse and simply deleted rhyme and regular meter from it.2^

lie wrote what she termed "highly emotional prose1' which

became poetry because he was able fco make an appropriate

"approacn and return" to "some basic emotional symbol

In the light of the broader definitions which free

verse was assuming in the first half of-the twentieth cen-

tury, one wonders that Miss Lowell was able to be the

champion of free verse under the strict definition she gave

3;or IT,. It vias actually only a segment of the Imagist

24, „ Lowell, "I7a.lt Whitman and the New Poetry.4 JiiiS, 3(^1 f new series (April f 1927) , 503 • j

PH , p. 310•

Pfy 0*7 "" Ibid., p. 509.. • •, p. 503.

11

philosophy of which she waa the charapion. The second of

the six tenets which this group published as its manifesto

commented on free verse. The Imagists were dedicated,

among other things, "to create new rhythms—as the expression

of new moods—and not to copy old rhythms, which merely

echo old moods." They further explained, "Y/e do not

insist upon 'free verse* as the only method of writing

poetry. Y/e fight for it as for a principle of liberty.

Y/e believe that the individuality of a poet may often be

PS

better expressed in free-verse than in conventional forms.11

What, then, v/as a cadence in free verse poetry?

Kiss Lowell seemed never to tire of explaining cadence--

even cooking to replace the term, "free verse8' wi bh that

of "cadenced verse." It v/as, she wrote in the preface

Socio Imagist Poets, 3.916, and re-echoed in Tendencies,

a "sense of perfect balance of flow and rhythm." It was

the rise and fall of thought patterns established both by

the sense of appropriateness in the composer of the poem

and the rhythmic accuracy of the reader. She illustrated

the cadence witn Hilda. Boolittle *s poem "Oread":

23 i>i.iy Lowell et al,, Some Imagist Poets (Boston;

XiOiidon, 1915), as quoted by Amy Lowell in "The Imagists; /U-D- a n d John Gould i'letcher," Tendencies in Modern American Poetry (New York, 1917) , 1 p 7 ^ 7 ' —

12

whirl up, sea— Whirl your pointed, pines, Splash your great pines On our rocks, Earl your green over us,

Cover us with your pools of fir.

In this poem, Miss Lowell explained, were to be

found five cadences corresponding to the five imperative

verbs and their modifiers. These five imperative sentences

igain divide themselves into time units as follows: IThirl up/ sea—/ Whirl./ your pointed pines/ Splash/ your great pines/ on our rocks/ Hurl/ your green over us/

Cover us/' vdth your pools/ of fir./

uTien Miss Lowell made tests on a sound-photographing

machine with William m. Patterson, a scientist at Columbia

University, they nooed that in this short poem she had

paused 13/10 seconds on at least five of the pauses indicated

by the slash markings. The strophe, then, was not the

syllable, the line, or the stanza in free verse. It was,

according to Miss Lowell, a unit of time into which the

e .pi ess ion c OJUJ. oroably fit and would seem complete.'"*

Amy Lowell was fascinated by the possibilities of

explaining free verse in a scientific way. m a book re-

view of Patterson's The of Verse, in The Mai, dated

January, 1918, she reiterated some of his findings. The

review is notable for her enthusiasm in finding a scientific 29 Lowell, l?enden£ie£, pp. 263-65.

13

explanation of "the sense of swing," as Patterson called

*50 it, in free verse,.

It waa only .Miss Lowell' s preoccupation with I mag lain

which kept her from assuming a major role of leadership

in the free verse movement in America-, She was something

of a trooper3 an evangelist for it anyway. When one reads

her statement that "forms are merely forms, of no parti-

cular value unless they are the necessary and adequate

clothing to some particular manner of thought, he

realizes 'chat her passion for the other five points on

the Imagists * manifesto overshadowed her rather interesting

and unique work in the defining of free verse.

Louis Simpson has pointed out that American poets

today ca.n.ao b aflirm anything together. Only their kindred

dialikes are in agreement.^ Such is the case with their

views on free verse. About the only thing they agree on

is that there are many different ways of looking at it.

Of the older moderns--the isen who lived through the

Classic Modernists period and who still retain reputable

images--lawrence ZiUraan and John Ciardi are apt spokesmen.

Zillman, in his Writir^ Your Poem, comments 'that the

30, ...v . -- uy Jjowe.11, "The .Rhythms of Free Verse " rPhp JjXIV (January 17, 1918), 54. v ' o C' _2ial,

31 p. 3. L o w t 1 1* 'Mwin Arlington Robinson," Tendencies,

32. Live S'1Jlpfr°?f "

p o e t s 0X1 Poetrys Dead Horses and IkJ,:,uoa' lation, OCX? (April 24, 196?), 521.

14

widespread use of free verse today ia a mixed "blessing, for

badly done, it appears as "merely chopped-up prose." He

is careful, though, not to discount the possibilities for

it. He gives dignity to the movement when he writes,

". . .the writer who turns to it not as an escape but as

an avenue for more perfect and more varied rhythmical

communication merits our attention and respect, as does

the form itself." zillman is careful to delineate the

main qualities of free verse: it may or may not have

rhyme and the .line length should be carefully determined

by the sense of the words. He discusses two kinds of free

verse, the Arnold variety and the Whitman type. The

Arnold form nas as its nucleus 'the iambic pentameter line

but this norm fluctuates to meters of different .lengths

and to a variation in poetic feet from line to line, l'here

is only a sense of blank verse, in the Arnold variety,

myme is sometimes used for emphasis but not with any for-

mal scheme in mind.

In the Whitman type of vers libro, the poet must

make an appropriate balance between form and content in

such a way that the two appear to have grown s j. mult an eo usly

out, of bhe nucleus of thought. Such devices as parallelism,

reiteration, and phonetic recurrence constantly enhance

the meaning in Y/hit manes que free verse.

Zillman- ins is us that there roust be a sense of organi-

sation in the writing of free verse which comes from the

15

poet's distinction between prose and free verse. The

poet must have a feeling of strict rhythmicity when he

writes. Zillraan also advocates predominance of one or

another poetic feet in the writing of free verse. Al-

though many would say that Zillman is ultra-conservative,

he does not seem too unreasonable when he ends his dis-

cussion by commenting, "Normally the writer of good free

verse will have mastered the feeling for discipline that

comes through mastery of the regular patterns, and as a

result his free verse .will possess a quality and a strength

not otherwise possible."^

In one of his columns for the Saturday Review, John

Ciardi has a great deal of fun with Robert i'root's comment

that free verse 'is like playing tennis with the net down.*

Ciaidi counters frost's statement with the suggestion that,

ii one is a good player, knowing where the net is supposed

l£ bo W be more exciting than playing the game with the

not in place. He devises tantalizing court situations —

ohe net hixed high on one side, pulled low on the otherj

tne net wi uh a nole in it through which the players may hit

the ball; the net raised three feet off the ground. All

this is to make the point that the players, if they are

basically good enough, may devise new rules for playing

more whimsically or with more difficulty. Applying the

metaphor to poetry, Ciardi argues that "All that is

'J

.. . J>-v/ronoo J„ Zillman, "r.Tore Complicated Structures " M a s s J2HE £225 (Hew York, 1950), pp. 58-65. M U e b '

16

necessary is that there be rules of some sort." He goea

on to say of free verse writing:

The fact is that something has to measure. It may he the wave length of the cadence. It may he the breath group of the phrase. It may be a pattern of caesuras. Or the line length. Or as little as the width of the page. Or the'play of one rhythm against another. Or an assonantal or a consonantal pattern combined with the cadence. It may be anything but it has to be Something, and that Something must measure.

Ciardi closes by admonishing the student who would

write free verse well to learn to play the poetry game

under the rules already established, and then, when he

is good enough, to invent variations of his own design.

The playing of those variations, then, would constitute

the writing of good free verse?4

Of the poets who have come to prominence in the last

twenty years, Kenneth Rexroth commented in 1965, " . . . all

have one thing in common. They no longer find it .necessary

to be in revolt against the formalist tradition and its

exclusive echoing of the stylistic exercises of the British

texooook poets." ilexroth remarked somewhat playfully of

fcne ofcafce ox met/rico, 11. , .the chances of a baroque sonnet

packed with seventy-seven euphuistic ambiguities being printed

today, except in the quarterlies of the Old Guard—the

Kenyan, and Hudson Re views--are remote indeed."55

"I'!0VY ;Fr®° I s F t q q Verse?" Saturday zikjtLzl±.d> • "j'Vil, P o. 1 (Jvtarch 21, 1964), 14-15. *•

35-Iloxro fell, "The Few American Poets, » Earner»a

? CGJCXDC (June, 1965) , 67.

17

.Rexroth's view is corroborated "by Helen Vendler,

who writes in The Kassachus etts Review, "For the time

being, in fact, regular prosody seems to have "become an

36

Iron Maiden: . . ,"y Poets today, writes Louis Simp-

son, are not interested in producing the 'well-made' 37

poem.^1

A look into an anthology of avant-garde poets would

seem to justify Simpson's comment. Of the nineteen

American poets represented in a new volume of free verse

called Faked Poetry; Recent American poetry in Open Forms,

only eleven were even willing to comment on their poems

as a part of the "most alive poetry in America" which

"had abandoned or at least broken the grip of traditional

meters

The essays range from a somewhat hysterical Pound.tan

essay by Allen Ginsberg to a very reasonable, low-key piece

oi writing by Robert Lowell, it is a temptation to quote

.Lowell in j.ull« Sxcerpts must suffice. He writes that ho

iias two rules lor the composition of free verse. First,

he never scans a line while he is composing it. Second,

the words must fall into line naturally. Lowell says of

36t-Helen Vendler, "Recent American Poetry " The Massa-

gMsetts Review, VIII (Gum/aer, 1967), 550. 37 •"Simpson, p. 521. 38-,

. + . . S^cent .American Poetry in Open Forms ?«•*' YnrV7 ! Q'-a\ien B e r? m < i R o b e r t j^^yXlndiEnapoTis^SHd"™ .dew rori-t, 19o9), p. xi.

18

ills own writing that he seldom, uses "complete freedom"

hut more often seta down restrictions for himself, limits

like stanzaic patterns, rhymes or si ant,-rhymes, and lines

of.similar length to the eye.. Lowell seems to have little

trouble reconciling past metrics with present-day free

verse practice: "Yet often a poem only becomes a poem

and worth writing because it has struggled with fixed meters

and rhymes. I can•1 understand how any poet, who has writ-

ten both metered and unmetered poems, would be willing to

"59

settle for one and give up the other.

Robert Bly, one of the most popular of the new poets,

wishes in his essay for a "way to talk about poetry that

doesn't descend to technique." He finds himself more

sympathetic toward the term 11 free verse" than he is "open

form" because "free verse" suggests "a longing." Bly dis-

penses with prosody, "an ugly world," when he writes that

"talk of technique 'throws light1 on poetry, but the last

thing we need is light.

Ox the other poets, Wil3.iam Stafford and Robert

Greeley find new explanations for free verse in the study

of linguistics.^1 Jaiuea Wright believes that the prin-

ciple of parallelism i3 the governing rule in much of his 39 Robert Lowell, "On freedom In Poetry," Naked Poetry,

* J L •

^Robert Bly, "Looking For Dragon Smoke," Naked Poetry, p. 1&4. *.»

^'William Stafford, "Finding the Language," pp. 82-83, and Robert Greeley, "Notes Apropos 'i'ree Verse'," pp. 3 85-87. Halted, Poetry. ' • '

19

42 own free verse.

Gary Snyder, a moot important poet, emphasizes the

poet's utotal sensitivity to the inner potentials of his

own language—pulse, breath, glottals nasals & dentals,

an ear, an eye and a belly" if he is to write successful

poems in the twentieth century.'^ That comment, in 1966,

sounds like one Whitman might have made in 1855.

A systematic, sure method to measure the value of a

literary form has not yet "been devised. So far, the

passage of time is the most trustworthy test. Using time

as a gauge for speculating on the viability of American free

verse, one recognizes that it has served a long apprentice-

ship, One hundred years demand that the free verse move-

ment "be taken seriously by anyone who sets himself up to

comment on American tradition in verse.

But the terra representing the movement has become so

general as to be in need of rejuvenation or euthanasia.

Perhaps it will be superseded by "open forms,5' "organic

poetry," or "naked poetry." A re»christening might check

the slide toward non-meaning which the term and its concept

have been making.

One could wish for an American literary scientist who

would take it upon himse3,f to do research in the "variable

42 James Wright, "From a Letter," Faked Poetry, p. 28?.

43 Gary Snyder, "Some Yips & Barks in the Dark," Waked

Poetry, p. 557.

20

foot", the "strophe," "cadence"rhythmicity,"--in short,

the v/ha t e ve r-make s -• fr e e - ve rsc - v/ha t - i t - i s . It v/ould be a

study to satisfy Amy Lowell's ghost and Walt Whitman*3

yearning for a national shape to American poetry. And it

should find encouragement among the moderns. Perhaps it

might even "bring to light certain laws of chance, particu-

lar stochastic principles, in their writings which v/ould

be reducible to mathematical formulae. Such a finding

would be useiul for exposing the chaos which goes mas-

querading as free verse. And, in a more salutary sense,

it could delineate some of the yet~undiscovered reasons

for the superiority of the better vers libre of the day.

PART II

AN EXPERIMENT IN VERSE

21

22

Sonnet

The manehiId«s ears sprout pink below the hair

Gut one-half inch to army regulation;

They scoop up headgearfuls of words the prayer

Is programing for later meditation

In the heliocopter, squatting among the enemy.

Responsive reading number twenty-nine

Calls hi9 attention to a speck of oily

S fcuff beneath his thumbnail which demands the time

Spanning the offertory, When next, "Praise God

From whom all blessings" sends him to attention

On iootball legs, back like a ramrod,

Shall he not mime the Jesus of stained glass ascension?

The sermon is too long—how to be brave.

Between pink ears he contemplates his grave.

23

Wiglitrida

To my back

the sulking dark

shredded her chiffon,

and frontward

marched the devil

spinning airwebs.

At my sides

the razored wind

was working

to de-ear me,

while up above,

a star was eonning

my motion.

24

Tercets: Eutation

Death came in sunblood,

Spilling on the world

Fuchsias and scarlets unruled.

'i'he frenzied skysides

.V.1 owed down reds

From suicidal eyelids

Announcing the dayhall

Had stabbed itn own hull

Unto the utmost full.

Birth came in moonskin

Chamoising the heaven

A fawn's ear's tan-

Honey resolving to seem

Auric dim

Within a lunar realm.

But fading to milk white,

It was the gorgeous aught

The dawn would soon make not.

25

Uncertainty

It is hard to know

Yvhich dinosaur

Said v/hat to which

And which said each

To each

Certain truths.

It is difficult

To catch the critic muse

For a private interview

To determine which review

Is absolute.

And it rather causes pain

I'o think Kant

And Dickens

And Hart Crane

In the self-same flash

Of brain.

26

Tanka: Carbon Black Factory at Night

Into the night world

wander your sickly wafcthoura—

fading, glittering

on a vast jigsaw puddle

of bone and wood fumes.

Goronado would have moaned

Cibola! could- he

have stumbled on you tonight

in all your stinking

hypocritic finery.

Isn't it enough

to blight everything ten miles

to the north and west

with that Lucifer's garlic

breath in the daylight?

No, it's overtime you will,

burping leftovers

on white-wings, cactus blooms, deer,

j a.v e I ina s , qua i 1 s

that the Misters Pratt and Kirk

of earth may have go pel copy.

2?

Doublegangers

Blood and time are tho same.

One ticks,

Tho other drips.

Both sound.

Blood and time are the same.

One is rust,

The other red.

Both stain.

Blood and time are the same.

One passes,

One flows.

Both, finally, are gone.

28

Last Tuesday-

Last Tuesday I went to the library.

The re--.in a room full of permanent things:

Books with page seven-hundred-thirteen in them,

Tables of oak with a clear laquered sheen on them,

.Fastened to floors with a waxy gleam to them-—

There rolled a dandelion top.

A dandelion top is just rounded hair,

A zero of white, vegetated air.

It embarrassed mo to see

That .it sought no degree,

That it hopped and flitted and bumbled .incog

While completely ignoring the card catalogue.

But that was all last Tuesday.

Today I went back to the library.

There—in that seat of stability,

Except that page seven-hundred-thirteen was torn;

The laquered table, some scratches had borne;

The wax on the floor looked a little worn——

There sat the dandelion top.

29

I cane away from that rigid room,

Adding this to the great moral sops:

Put not thy faith in the permanent place;

Trust only the dandelion tops!

30

Shack

The light swings uncleverly.

The dog lifts a worn-out belly,

Flies worry the doorway.

Children worry the dirt.

A v/ecd-f lower

Bothers to sentinel.

The rain drips

Stupid, stupid drips

In a bucket.

31

• Concerted Effort

You coughed

in the adagio,

Crossed your legs

at the scherzo,

Picked at a nail

damn it

When the recapi-

tulation hit,

And unpa.rdonab.ly scratched

in the coda*

All this hustle

made the musico-

logist next to you

equina a t£^go,

in his overcoat

and glare synco-

pated sideways,

as he artfully drew

from his pocket

a Turn.

32

While Beethoven sighed,

(and heard himself at last)

Forgave you

the monkeyness

And unjoyed

your seatraate.

55

Lament

I used to chew upon a pigtail's tip

To find, out why there should be grass at all,

Or ride a bike down through the flickering park

To get a drink that splattered all my front.

To gather seven buckets of pecans

Would be juot for the up-and-down of it,

And looking .forward every night to Saturday

Would mean a quarter all my own to smell.

A dog's ears were my confession box

T/hen I cried the pet duck's late departure

Or felt a saddening thrill that Mr. Oman

Died next doorj I made-believe where he had gone,

Then, 1 could laugh until I shivered,

Play slinging statue before the summer's bedtime--

I did not need permission 'bo fall

Giggling in the grass and growing quiet,

To stare until the call up to pink clouds

Lambing their way before blue thunderheada.

34

To a Woman Who Pleased King Solomon

You there in the Word,

G-et out!

You with goblet-belly,

Heap of wheat among lilies

And twin-running breasts.

You,

Harlot-necked in ivory,

i?/et~eyed,

Night-haired,

rnelling of fruit.

Run a.way!

Get you down the halls

Of Jerusalem!

Tremble!

For you were beautiful

And dared dance

In our I-ioly Scriptures.

35

In Late Day

In late day

•birds rise

from places distant

and unknowable,

rise up

to test the plan

of a quiet,

unbirdcd sky.

Tliey know why

they are rising,

and why,

all together,

they fly

gray

gray

graywhite

gray,

26

Ballad of the Pueblo; 1968

A little "boy takes up his boat one day,

Puts it in the pond to sail,

Charges the .men on that ship of tin

That they do stand him well.

Oh, sing eighty~three plastic men All their batt le s""wi 11" win I

The little plastic sailors say aye,aye sir!

The little boy pushes them off;

They sail away to a distant bay,

Their station: an oriental gulf.

Sailing is smooth for many an hour

And many a nighttime too

When the moon is out and it's light about

And the sailors have little to do.

The little boy sits at the water's edge.

A proud and happy Icing

Smiles as hie pride sails over the tide

Without even a motor or string.

eighty-three plastic toys, 23ound~"tb pToase^Selllttle ""boy

37

VJait! The boy strains—he gets to his feet—

The a hit) near an island is stopped.

"What is the matter?" he's heard to chatter,

"Why are you, my men, all stopped?1*

The skipper calls, "We're in trouble, ray king—

A mouse in a mask has come forth;

He tells us to stop or we'll all he shot—

Will you let us change our course?"

Oh, sing eighty-three plastic troops, Stancfing now" in^Titfle^roupa'I "*

jVirst the hoy wades out to his .knees;

How it's back to the shore he's crossed,

"I don't think I can help,81 he calls to the ship,

"But stay on your course at all cost.1'

The little p.las tic men go clattering about;

There's smoke and there's sound of a din,

As the mouse in the mask goes about his task

Of hauling the little ship in.

PJ?.j sitiff el.ghty-three plastic sailors. AXl inacte pris ongrs'T *"*"

58

The water is quiet; the child can't see

Tho* he looks for a long, long time;

"I want to rescue my little crew

But I don' t know how," Vie whines.

"And even though they may be gone

And I have to get some others,

Better they killed than I get chilled,

Or they disobey my orders."

Oh, sing eighty-three plastic men, All their fights should"win!

So it's home to bed for the little boy.

He sleeps for eleven hours

And dreams of the time when he'll gather his dimes

To replace his naval powers.

Oh, he hears a knock—he wakes with a a tart—

(If there'a anything he's hating,

It's to be annoyed in a sleep he's enjoyed—)

There the mouse in the mask is waiting.

59

"I have your men in this old sack;

There's one in that "basket.

I hit them good and found their blood

Tho' I thought they were solid plastic."

Oh, sing eighty-three plastic men, Bi gh t ,y t wo~ come"" home again I

The little hoy is rubbing his eyes,

"I'd planned to buy some others,

But if you choose, I guess 1 could use

These same plastic sailors."

He's stretching out his hand for the bag,

"Just a minute," says the voice in the mask,

"Before, little boy, you have your toy,

You must do the thing I ask,"

"You'must say these words in a loud, clear voice,

In a matter-of-fact tone:

'The mouse in the mask has twice ray ass

And one-and-a-half backbone.' "

The little boy laughs at the pretty words;

He does not know they're weighted.

Quickly now he says them how

The mouse wants them repeated.

40

Then he snatches up the bag of men-—

The basket now he seizes,

Slams the door, pours them out on the floor

And stomps them all to pieces.

Oh, sing eighty-three plastic men, All theTrHSttles must"wlnl

41

Rhetoric

I dare say

my cleavage

would "be faulty

on a close-up;

also that a gorilla

would "best you, dear,

on "body hair-—

ahl the sad fate

of padded bras and

anthropologic ta

lurking close

as light years

to us,

us here alive

and warm togetherI

42

Syllables

All crudeness are they

and cruel their sounds

as hungry, they wait

in stained verbal gowns

All nothings are they

and nothing their lot

as vainly, they game

their Unguis tical rot.

All emptiness, they,

and hollow their walk

as parting, they curse

their fat gods of talk.

43

Crab

It wao only in hunting back

Among colors

I had not thought

'Co remember—

Only in searching

Colors I had not told,

"I will remember you,"

That'I found it:

The blue

When I was a child-

Blue faded

By no v/hite cloud-—

Blue the sun dashed through

And hued like

No c.'vvern rock

Or bird egg.

It was absent

When white fluffs floated

Or the ink-blue

Of evening

Promised storm*

44

It was the color

When the sky meant nothing

But I -AM,

When there was no one'or thing

To terrify

Or think me.

Then it was only in hunting back

Among colors

I had not thought

To remember

That I found this blue

Of his crust and claws.

When I saw it,

I could only

Ask how he had any right

To parts of sky

Upon him-—

Especially a childhood sky

That meant or said nothing

But the biggest truth.

45

To take the sky,

The "best sky

Of the "beat days, I

To throw it a "bout you

In textured, measured disarray

Where all the blue would show

When jointed, knotty,

You would scuttjle by: |

To do this is blaspheme

Heights and depths, i !

And be a crab, .

And make me sigh.

Yet one more thing

There was to seef:

The answer of ttje blue

To boiling water.

It was the shawing of me, I

Drab and unbelieving,

Y/hen the crab wijthdrew his blue

And substituted jskies of orange-

Hues of fruits, | !

Burning bricks, !

-6

Streaks when the sun dissolves,

Streaks defying anyone or thing

ffo cry Stay,

Fierce because they are dying

Into the night,

Orange of anger.

Thus went the crab,

flinging his day to dusk,

Saying he was the greatest

Of sky-stealer3,

Taking that private blue—

And when he could no more,

Lashing out an orange sunset.

He made all I knew, fietive,

Arid all I did not, vvonuera'ble.

47

Snow

listen!

A child it comes',

running fleet

over grass

stone

tree

hill

moon

running backward

up the stars

running swift and silk

to the mothers.

Listen!

How it comes

an old man,

s tumbling ble ak

over dropsy drifts

fusty with ice,

scratching at the glass

to come in

and be dead.

48

The Insects

They came to the light,

Even when it started to rain.

Big, lovely, drooping, dipping

They came*

They darted around the back-alley bulb,

Slowed only a fraction of time

By wet wings.

They stayed there,

Dumb and diligent

Until tho light flicked uncertainty,

Swung giddy in the rain breeze,

And went out.

They probably droned off in the downward wet.

They probably fell, kicking, into new puddles

It was too dark to see for sure.

49

Songs of Senility

I.

Par out in the roar

They grapple, clutch

At the tide.

They fancy their honey hands

White china,

And the green waves

Ruffles.

It is all just as it was*—

Dishes and petticoats

And the conversation—

Only someone has spilt

A water goblet and v/ill

•Sally please come quickly

And get it up?

50

II.

Through waters that once washed

Their childselves

They rock in limp bliss—

Rock, rock

On through noon

And the evening,

Just cradlea

And later,

Hobby horses.

There v/as oojne thing,

Something after that-—

But, by the way,

My grandfather made this rocker.

Notice it doesn't squeak

Even when it rains.

131

III.

Pardon me, lady,

But your head is rocking. Don't

I know it, son?

You see these strands of pearls

around my neck

the girl aold me? Well, underneath

there is a seam

that keeoa my head fastened on.

The doctor thinks

the v/ibbles have me for agreeing

with so many

of ray lovely friends, or did he say

it was my tsk tsks

and pBhavvs? Well, no matter.

I aade it out to town

without an accident don't you see?

52

Three Poems For Children

1.The Dark

Can you make a mark

Upon the dark?

Can you scratch it

With a hatchet?

Can you scoop it

In a "basket

Before you ask it

"Please?"

If you could,

You might hide it

In your feed,

And remembering

In your head

That it'>s there,

Bring it out

Into the air

Some day

As you play.

55

Then you'd pour it

On the grass

And all your friends

Would have to ask,

"What's that stuff?"

"What's that junk?"

"What's that big "black hunk?"

Looking serious just enough,

You could turn and then remark,

"Don't you know?

This is tho dark.

54

2. Rain

The rain is d , g like a baby, in Texas, i i

and 3-i i, d„ in Missouri. t, e, n i f n g

It KN-OC-KS politely at umbrellas in Hew York

, oh9

or sa l7g to gravity in Florida,

It's 0 e Georgia or o • a • 1 • t • a ai • d»p»e • p • p«e • r * i • n • g Oregon.

Speak, drop! Did you sail Columbus? Did a

dinosaur sip you? Did you baptize Jesus?

Sink Atlantis? Tell me or I will lick you

gone, you silly piece of everything!

55

3. Haiku: The Wind

The wind is a snake

sliding through the hairy grass,

careful to part it.

Sometimes a monkey,

the wind leaps from tree to tree ,

shaking each one *s neck.

Or he is the bird

we call to, "Let us come!51 \vhen

he up-twits the sky.

56

Terza Riraa:

To A Pi*lend Who Died Somewhat Unexpectedly

We marked each day you coughed a little les3

and noted that your color was quite good.

You did not talk of personal distress

at midnight, or the episodes'of blood

upon so many things, Nor did you show

the sentimental eye which finally would

not focus or the headache much too slow

in going away. Today at last I went

to your grave. Twice I had to go

hack to the gardener to ask which one he meant.

The simblenched red of plastic roses bloomed

your second cousin had so kindly sent

two weeks before. Now, with you intonibed,

I was eager to kneel and bring the tears at last,

to make a present of my grief exhumed.

57

But, in honor of all drivel of "the past,

I mindless stood, wiping the sweat from my face,

and, slmpatla complete, agreed with you that grass

would have a problem growing in that place.

58

Nuns

They arc the holy penguins

Pacing in measured steps

The human shoreline.

They are mockingbirds

Trebling midnight penance

For the twittering day-lot.

They are soft-breasted pigeons,

Becorating the dullish pinnacles

With faith.

t>9

Eye Postures

I. Down

This stance is designed

With shoelaccs in mind

Or rather inside pants cuffs—

Or dirt.

Yet also snakes,

Canyons,

And cement.

II. Sideways

The pose is supposed

To be right

For birds low in flight,

For looking inside windows

While walking past~~

Exact for sending hate next door,

Or bonne t~-viewing in church.

60

III. Straightvvays

A position perfect

i or spitting goals it is,

As well as playing hypnotist,

And winning arguments--

Just fine for missing tree trunks,

Sighting ducks,

And looking dead.

IV. Up

This bearing is rare-—

Reserved for organ pipes,

.Strings of jet smoke,

Grandfathers with loose eyeglasses-

i'or tasting rain,

i'e e 1 ing f ac e - c 1 onds ,

Or .seeing noon.

61

To A Boy Who Lost His .First Tooth. Today

Goodnight, fresh jack-oKLantoml

Unfist you. now I must

to take the pebbly tooth

that hitched a ride

on a candy stick

seesawing between your lips

this afternoon.

I leave the dime in hopes

it shines enough to dross

the taste of bloody spit

and eaj.ru your curious tongue.

Fairylike» I lean to kiss you—

careful as a mesquito on your cheek.

How could you be six and angular so soon?

Unfa i ry l i i c e, I say an evening vesper

on the private air

your breathing punctuates,

a .joint• ad.dresaed petition,

•'Just for tomorrow,

May the grin not be too broad."

62

Oh. . .goodnight, snaggletooth!

1*11 go along with you and wave my wand,

But I reserve the right,

Y.'aen I got out and close your door,

To do it quietly.

63

Palm Readings

To prophesy to palms Is hazard. They are various, aloof, and above all--wise.

Better only to soothe their lines and with a humble finger relate to them their sovereignty.

I. Royal

Soeing you thirty yeare old

_and standing idle,

I name you otacked-up etraightnesa

with frow^e crovm.

I call you lion tree—

s trength and thick mane

of green speaking "Ruler."

Pythagoras taunt I

No1;/ you are MOO high up

for connort,

casual in dropping down

attritod fronds.

64

Laugh!

Grow new in regency!

Call wind your retainer!

Fock rising air!

XI. Pan

Duty is not yours

in 'befriending heights

"but in soothing

earthward spaco

with fiber hands—

green and wide

'with success.

Paliiia Carist.i.,

who caught Hosannahs

and donkey feet,

you stoop

two thousand years

to neat sparrows

he suffered not failing.

65

Spread yourself •

as a "beggar.

Worship breadth

and laud extent.

Know secretly

you are not fettered,

"but volunteer

to humbleness.

III. Date

The unsatisfied become beautiful,

you have aaid.

•I will "be without content

for my queen leaves

and pedestaled footing.

I shall add necklaces

of eunnet "beads,

sweet as .flowing water

and dark shade.

I shall adorn myself

with nectar love,

with hidden ebony embraces.

Temptress,

who mocks a lover's want

with fruit jewels!

66

Spenserian Stanza: Larry

He is not gone into the private heaven

We scurried to design for him that day—

The lot on the hill, plenty of grass, even

A tree; then hone regretfully to lay

Out the fresh-pressed suit, the socks of gray,

The shirt new-given, and (the man had stressed)

His nicest shoea. All this is not to say

We were uncareful of our tears—the best

Were easy to provide; v/e never once digressed.

lie is not gone into the private heaven

We later thoughtfully prepared for him-—

A small collection at the library—even

A gold plaque beneath, a stone with trim

Creative, and a white chrysanthemum

Planted on the right. We now confess

It obvious he had his own dream;

Beethoven on bassoon? Shakespeare in dress

Of Hal? Or does the Christ play him a game of chess?

67

Three Conditions of Hind

I. Numbness

It starts from the spaces around Think.

It spreads in high-ringing streams through the ears,

To suffocate,

To bury your listening eyes in'birdsong frequencies.

It clatters black plastic spots through

The clean, scooped-out spaces of your brain,

laughing w.i th an 0-mouth

When you say, THINK!

THINK OI1' SOMETHING!

Then it answers, NO THING

TO THINK.

Now the spaces go hot,

And moving up and down in clacks,

Ploy/ down the ears

In streams of solid black.

68

II. Timeness

Until after a while

You learn to seek out Timeness.

After a while, when the ringing

Becomes raolten

And the clacking dark.

Stop the noise in the spaces around Think,

Listen to between heartbeats.

There is Timeness--

Just a line,

V/'hite,

With little right

To exist between the pulses,

But there for measuring the going-by.

Upon hearing the thin vmine

Of the white line

And seeing it steady-

Between roars,

You have known Time.

When the line stops

And the roar is all,

There is still Time—

In the next person.

The main thing is to keep counting.

69

I I I . Dualness

Count to the sura,

Being two *

Count how split the between heartbeats,

Into halves.

See a duo dancing there?

There, in a numb-dumb sing-song?

See among- the clacking dots

A two-double-both

Or a seesaw nothing?

A game,

A sunmoon game

Hops ear to ear-—

Calling

BACKPOimi!

miiosQimu

70

Blood Rain

It is blood rain, children;

It is Oklahoma blood rain.

It is plain rain

Plus dust.

This, they told us.

But it was blood alone

When it-came spitting

On our faces.

Vfe could only go inside,

Sorrowfully watch it.

It was blood to us.

"It was rays terious

iVnd sad and sanguine,

.Vailing in thuds.

"Does this come,"

asked we,

"Prom the same god

I'fho sent the flavored rain

T/hen we stretched out our tongues

Last week in the afternoon?"

71

Haiku: The Seasons

Spring

the antique dealer

is out of lucic for no one

wanta last year's lampshades.

Summer

the worship service

for all lizards has comraenced-

Ilal 1 elu3 ah, heat!

Fall

no grass seeks a fugue

or star comes out for book truth;

no bird goes unwise.

Winter

aky is a closet

storing us between two suns

unti1 holidays.

72

. i'o My Father

There is a while, now, when you o.nd I

May walk as good friends within our days,

For I am not the child demanding praise

Nor you the old man ambitious to die.

We are suspended in the double why

Of child and father. Gone the lovely phase

Of boosting rue to your shoulder in the cra^e

Oi pa be.mi ty. Mot yet X la&ke the bed on which you lie.

This remembering, shall we not quickly reason

That words of weather ;md the likes of talk

Would rob us of discovering the other

Y/ho is most like ourselves? Come! It is the season

For earnestness j let ue take a walk

And a ay wiose words vvnich oost can hearten one another#

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Abbe, George, You and Contemporary Poetry, Peterborough, Mew HampisliireT^NcTonenKouse^^^^ .*"* *

The American Tradition in Literature, 2 vols.,, edited by ScuXIey~Bra¥Iey7 SicEariTT&'Oom Beatty, and E. Hudson long, New York, VM7. Norton & Company, Inc., 1956.

Ciardi, John, "How Does A Poem Jlean?" in An Introduction I'o Literature, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Gorapany, 1959 •

Co'olent2, Stanton A., An Editor Looks at Poetry, Mill Valley, California",*"?ingS" Press, 1947•

Drew, Elizabeth, Poetry: A Eodern fktide to Its Understanding and >Jn,Josvment"i~ Hew York7"7Dell PubXis£ing~CbT, Ino 7,"' """"" T959~o ~

Lowell, Amy, (Tendencies in Kodern American Poetry, New York?> THe^lacmiTLTaH^

Naked. Poetry: lie cent /oner i can Poetry in Ojoen |Jorms, edited by "Stephen Berg™na"ji6¥erFl?e??ey7 TndXsnapoXis and New York, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Jnc., 1969.

$h© Poetry and Pro^o or V%lt V/iaitmui, edited by Louis " Unterideyer"} Tor£7*"S:tiu5n ind Schuster, 1949.

Shapiro, Karl and Sobert Beum, A Prosody Handbook, Hew York, Harper & Row, 1965."™ " ~~ ~

Spender, Stephen, The £ Taking of A Poem, London, Hacaish Hamilton, 19'5"5«" ~~

JJillxaan, Lawrence John, Making Your Poem, New York, Punk & Y/agnalls, 1950. : """ """* ""

73

74

Articles

'Benjamin de Caoseros Defines Vers_ Libre in Vers Libre," Current Opinion, LXI (July, 1916), 49*

Brooks, Cleanth, "Poetry Since £he Waste Land,J Soivbhern Review, 1, new aeries (Summer, 1965), 487-500,

Ciardi, John, "LVeryone Writes (Bad) Poetry/' Satedaj; Review, XXXIX, Pt. 2 (May 5, 1956), 22, 27.

, "How Free Is Free Verse?" Saturday Review, l a m r ; Pt. I (March 21, 1964), 14-15*7 ~

, "What la Your Definition of Poetry?" Satur-- J M m i S Z * XLIX, Pt. 3 (September. 17, 1966), 10-11.

Fiedler, Leslie A*, "A Kind of Solution; She Situation of Poetry Now," Keii/on Review, XXVI (Winter, 1964), 54-79. '

Fuller, Henry 3. "New Field For Free Verse,51 I'he Dial, LXI (December 14? 1916), 515-17.

Hayman, Lee Iliehard, "Free Verse For Sale,1' The vlriter, LXII (September, 1949), 302-03-

Lowell, Amyj "In Defence of Vers Libre," The Dial, LXI (September 7? 1916), 133*7"

,"5Hie Rhythms of Free Verse," The Dial, .• CIV " " ^ J a n u a r y 17, 1916), 51-56. ~ ~ ""

, "V/alt Vaitman and the Hew Poetry," Tale Review, a0:r.-i(K-j (April, 1927), 502-19, —

Maynaxd, Theodore, 5}The Fallacy of Free Verse," Yale Review, XI (January, 1922), 354-66. * " — —

'Miles, -Josephine, ".American Poetry in 1965," The Massachu-setts Heriew, VJ.I (Spring, 1966), 321-35^

Rcxroth, Kenneth, "The New American Poets," Harper * s Magazine t CCXXX (June, 1965), 65-71. ~

Schwartz, Fliae, "Letter to the Editor," Criticism, VII (Fall, 1965), 379-81. .

Si.uipoon? Loxiis, "Poets on Poetry? Dead Horses and Live Issues," The |Iai;ion? CCIV (April 24, 1967), 520-22,

7 5

S i e t j e n s , E u n i c e , "I'he C u c k o o S c h o o l o f C r i t i c i s m , " P o e t r y , X L V I ( M a y , 1 9 3 5 ) » 9 6 - 9 3 «

Vendlor,' Helen, "He.cent A m e r i c a n P o e t r y , " The Maesachu-setts He vie v / , V I I I (Summer, 1 9 6 7 ) ? l~6*d»

B n e y c 1 o p e d i a A r t i d e s

f Gay Wilson, nl»*ree Verse," Bncye 1 oprsd 1 a Britannloa,

Vol. I X , C h i c a g o , RneyclopssdfiT itamiXca,"TDacTT A l l e n ,

1968.

" A m y L o w e l l , " T h e C o n c i s e M o t j . o ; a a r y o f ^ n g l i r . h a n d A m e r i -can P o e t s " ' ancTToe ryT oaPi;eZCSy'l)tdp£Wn Sp nc ' wad l i o n a l d Hall, N e w 'fork, Hawthorne . B o o k s Inc., 1 9 6 3 ,

E p s t e i n , _ J o s e p h , "American Literature,'» Encyclopaedia » Vol. i , C h i c a g o , ItocyeXopaiclIa'BHTannioa,

I n c . , 1 9 6 8 .

Skelton, R o b i n , "Poetry," TftioyclgpspjcLia B r i t a n n i c a , V o l , X V I I I , Chicago, I ' l i i c y e T o p T i ^ ^ ^ , 1 9 6 8 .

Whitfield, Jane Shaw, ri 5he Improved Rhyming .Dictionary, M e w Y o r k , T h o m a s ' " Y T

v / i l l i a m s , W i l l i a m C a r l o s , > } ] ? 7 c e e V e r g e , 5 1 > • t } . o y c 1 o p e d i a o f a a 4 • £ § , t e d i t e d b y A l e x PremiiigerT""

Princeton#" NeiOersey, Princeton U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , 1 9 6 5 , ' ' ' ?

Woodf 0.1 ouiOxit _ land ana

9 S*iiik£j-dge<i T i h y m i n ^ D i c t i o n a r y , C l o v e -a M e w f o r k , l ! h e v / 0 r l d P i i r h l l s K l F g T o 7 7 ' l 9 4 3 .