In re Mark Goldblatt’s column today: My favorite put-down of free verse is G.K. Chesterton’s:
“Free verse? You may as well call sleeping in a ditch ‘free architecture’.”
Though I’ll agree that Robert Frost’s “playing tennis without a net” is pretty good, too.
Yet still it thrives, like kudzu.
I grumbled about this once to NR’s Jeff Hart. He: “Personally, I’d be happy if I could just get my students to remember the difference between free verse and blank verse.”






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