My Favorite Poetry Form

This was a final essay I wrote for a poetry class.  We were asked, based on what poetry we learned about during class and then wrote examples ourself, which form of poetry was our favorite.  This is the essay I turned in:

My favorite chapbook assignment was the free verse assignment.  Although my particular poem that I did for the assignment was not very good, I love the freedom this type of poem gives.  I enjoy rhyming and repetition and all the various other poetic devices, but I really like the unrestrained freedom that free verse gives.  Without being constrained to a specific rhyme pattern or meter, I can concentrate on the words, tone, imagery and meaning I’m trying to convey in my poem. 

Writing the ordinary in an extraordinary way by using the imagery and language is the goal of any poet.  Sometimes a word you need to convey an image is not rhyming with the poem you are writing.  By using the free verse you can use a specific word without trying to force it into a mold or form determined by a set of standards and rules from literature. 

Other poets have used this type of poetry for years.  One of my favorites is A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walt Whitman.  The “gossamer thread” gives such a poignant image that I cannot imagine it being forced into a rhyme or meter. 

Walt Whitman, poet

Similary Ted Kooser uses free verse in So This is Nebraska.  Not only does he throw rhyme and meter out, he also ends verses and begins new ones without punctuation where you expect it.  The images of trucks in the weeds and dancing on dirt roads is beyond beautiful.  Kooser is talented enough that I believe he could have conveyed a similar poem following all of the hard cut rules.  However, I feel some of the freedom and openness felt in this poem would have been lost by conforming.  The last three verses are as follows:

You feel like that; you feel like letting   

your tires go flat, like letting the mice   

build a nest in your muffler, like being   

no more than a truck in the weeds,

clucking with chickens or sticky with honey   

or holding a skinny old man in your lap   

while he watches the road, waiting

for someone to wave to. You feel like

waving. You feel like stopping the car

and dancing around on the road. You wave   

instead and leave your hand out gliding   

larklike over the wheat, over the houses.

The imagery is beyond beautiful.  My hope is to someday write even half as beautifully as this and as others have written as well.  Free verse frees my soul.