I'm not talking about blank verse that does not have rhyme but does have meter or rhythm. Talking about free verse that has neither. I don't believe that free verse should be considered poetry, regardless of how profound the words are. Just call it what it is: prose, not poetry.
Question then: By Definition, does poetry need to have any rhyme or reason at all ? Or does it need to be profound ? Seeings as there is so much garbage inundating the media that is called 'muisic' , or even 'art', for other examples subject to questioning (maybe subject to test for sanity!?) , and so-called 'freedom of speech' or some other freedom, if someone calls something a poem, who's to disagree ? Where is there any standard(s) ?
It needs to RHYME....Period! My daughter Tania has had 4 books of Poetry published, and there's not a rhyme anywhere! While I'm certainly proud of her being a Published Author, I just can't get into Rhymeless Poetry. Hal
I recall a definition of poetry during my undergraduate student era that went something like this: 'The smallest number of words to express an idea.' The line between prose and poetry is foggy. I recently finished re-reading a short story by Dylan Thomas. Prose or poetry?
I don't know. Many things change so why not poetry. I'm an uneducated senior so know little about poetry or prose. I have however read some prose poetry I much liked, as in this one: The Purpose of Poetry by Jared Carter This old man grazed thirty head of cattle in a valley just north of the covered bridge on the Mississinewa, where the reservoir stands today. Had a black border collie and a half-breed sheep dog with one eye. The dogs took the cows to pasture each morning and brought them home again at night and herded them into the barn. The old man would slip a wooden bar across both doors. One dog slept on the front porch, one on the back. He was waiting there one evening listening to the animals coming home when a man from the courthouse stopped to tell him how the new reservoir was going to flood all his property. They both knew he was too far up in years to farm anywhere else. He had a daughter who lived in Florida, in a trailer park. He should sell now and go stay with her. The man helped bar the doors before he left. He had only known dirt under his fingernails and trips to town on Saturday mornings since he was a boy. Always he had been around cattle, and trees, and land near the river. Evenings by the barn he could hear the dogs talking to each other as they brought in the herd; and the cows answering them. It was the clearest thing he knew. That night He shot both dogs and then himself. The purpose of poetry is to tell us about life.
Is free verse poetry? This was asked in a forum I'm on. I pondered it, not being sure of the answer. I tried rhyming things in my head, Let me think, here, laying in my bed, But wait, that's rhyme, And in free verse, might be a crime. Oops, I did it again. Wasn't that a song? Then I knew, from looking at what I wrote: It's not what you write, It's how you write it: Just skip every other line, That's the ticket!