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.”