Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
Can't publish. Don't rhyme, don't scan.
Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.
Five syllables," Apollo said, counting them on his fingers. "That would be real bad.
I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.
I feel in poetry there aren't that many rules that you need to absolutely live by depending on your style of poetry.
He said you should write about 75 lines every day. You know, Pound was a great one for laying down the law about how you did anything.
The rhyme always knows better than you, and leads you to places where you wouldn't otherwise have gotten to and that is absolutely the case. Leading off from formal poetry, there is something about when you pay attention to form and you allow it to have its own laws and you listen to those laws you really do end up in places you wouldn't otherwise go. Which isn't to say that I believe in following the rules when I write. I don't. Each of the forms in my books feels to me new.
Ornate rhetorick taught out of the rule of Plato.... To which poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less suttle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate.
