This poet’s question pesters me:

Is free verse really poetry?

Not in the view of Robert Frost

Who saw scant point when form was lost

For hopeful poets, form is hard

And free verse helps them play the bard

Unstructured lines, they dish up firstBut Frost liked poems served well-versed

Free verse’s goal, he didn’t get

Like playing tennis with no net

The imagery may be sublime

But short on stanza, meter, rhyme

It’s puzzling prose to great degreeAnd shouldn’t pose as poetry

Walt Whitman had a different mindAs Old World styles he “Leaves” behindBe liberated, he’d insist

This free-from-rules apologist

Here Robert Frost would disagree

Rules aren’t the foe of poetryThe poet’s road Frost took made senseAnd that made all the differenceI think he’d second those who’ve said:Call free verse “prosetry” instead.

Jerry Harris

Durango