Category Archives: Hal O’Leary

FREE VERSE

Let not there be a doubt, I am averse
To much of what they choose to call free verse.
For me, it has become the devil’s curse
On poetry, and making matters worse,
It’s naught but prose.

In dictionaries, metric is most used,
Along with rhyme, (the terms are often fused)
To tell us verse should never be confused
Or ever used with free.
We’re not amused.

If we are free to do most anything,
And all our words, we do not choose but fling,
Then lyricism loses all its ring,
And though we write, we can no longer sing,
I do suppose

Although it’s true we cannot close the door
On charges that we live in days of yore,
It’s time to claim, as we have done before,
Free verse? An oxymoron, nothing more.
With that, I close.