09-07-2026, 07:50 PM
Right now....well it's not quite the opposite but it's not quite the same either. I *like* affectation in poetry. I like meter and rhyme and when a poet tries their best to fit the meter and rhyme. I like it when they do so cleverly, sans repetition, using unusual words and syntax that's on the edge of antiquated but not quite---I'm liking Spenser. I loved Dante (which I finished in the Italian, so he was metered and rhyming for me). And I love rap, if the idiom is a little more contemporary than the two artists previously mentioned.
I also like it when a poet writes in meter or with rhyme but happens to make it sound so natural. I like to read mercedes and Leanne, who are my favourite examples of that sort of poetry in this site, and of course I love Yeats and Shakespeare. And then another of my favourites, Louise Gluck, stopped writing in meter and with rhyme fairly early in her career, and I absolutely adore what she'd put out since. I just....like poetry when it's good. I have little patience for it when it's bad. And artifice is neither good nor bad. It works for some situations---say, for highly formal epics like Spenser---and it doesn't work for others. It all depends on the discernment of the writer.
If you find yourself reading poetry and you start rejecting everything with rhyme or in meter because you have little patience for it, then that's a you problem. You're cutting yourself off from how people have tended to construct poetry since the dawn of, well, poetry, and how people still *naturally* construct poetry, especially where poetry remains truly in touch with the people: imo, folk and pop music. When you seek to write something original, you'll inevitably write poor imitations of your ancients. If you seek to reference, you'll have so small a store to refer to that your pieces will seem rather repetitive. Don't
just read a lot, read well, deep, and broad.
I also like it when a poet writes in meter or with rhyme but happens to make it sound so natural. I like to read mercedes and Leanne, who are my favourite examples of that sort of poetry in this site, and of course I love Yeats and Shakespeare. And then another of my favourites, Louise Gluck, stopped writing in meter and with rhyme fairly early in her career, and I absolutely adore what she'd put out since. I just....like poetry when it's good. I have little patience for it when it's bad. And artifice is neither good nor bad. It works for some situations---say, for highly formal epics like Spenser---and it doesn't work for others. It all depends on the discernment of the writer.
If you find yourself reading poetry and you start rejecting everything with rhyme or in meter because you have little patience for it, then that's a you problem. You're cutting yourself off from how people have tended to construct poetry since the dawn of, well, poetry, and how people still *naturally* construct poetry, especially where poetry remains truly in touch with the people: imo, folk and pop music. When you seek to write something original, you'll inevitably write poor imitations of your ancients. If you seek to reference, you'll have so small a store to refer to that your pieces will seem rather repetitive. Don't
just read a lot, read well, deep, and broad.