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@sir-leeds Thanks for starting this topic! (I’m coming back to SE forums after probably a year of inactivity and this is my first discussion participation… I was wandering around looking for a conversation to join and immediately jumped on this one :D)

I am an adamant free verse advocate! I can understand how people grow up thinking it doesn’t count as ‘real’ poetry… I think most of the focus when learning English in grade school and beyond is about rhyming, iambic pentameter, didactic tetrameter, and all that… (which absolutely has its place! There are thousands of fabulous traditional poems with perfect meter and rhyme) But I think the power and beauty of free verse is skipped over in general education, so people basically grow up thinking ‘poetry has to rhyme’. But I think we all agree it doesn’t. 😛

Most of the best, deepest, tear-inducing, heart-wrenching poetry I’ve read and loved is free verse. I enjoy traditional poems, yes, but all the poems that have ripped me open and touched my heart have been in the non-traditional style. It’s my opinion that free verse more closely mirrors our lives. A perfectly rhyming, classical poem has a beauty and rhythm that can speak to you, but how often does someone’s life reflect that? Free verse has beauty and rhythm hidden beneath the surface. You have to search for the rhythm and pull the beauty out from layers of long and short sentences, choppy bits and bits where it runs on. Life is kinda like that… the beauty and the honesty isn’t always perfect and right there in front of your eyes.

I think the lack of confines of free verse also let you demonstrate emotion better. If you’re worried about perfect and consistent meter and rhyme, you have to fit your emotion to a pre-sized box. You have to use words that maybe don’t tell exactly how you feel just because they rhyme. You have to cut short everything you want to say because it fits the meter better. Free verse is quite simply… free. While a good free verse writer still uses rhythm and rhyme of a different sort, he is free to expound on his emotions, to put in the raw and real language his heart is speaking in without worrying about fitting it to some blueprint.

The way free verse reads also seems more personal. I’m sure it’s different for some people, but I think reading and hearing classical poetry brings to mind school and long-dead poets, assignments to analyze meanings, and Shakespeare. None of those are bad things! But free verse is like having someone talk to you. It’s natural. It can flow like a conversation and connect to you in a personal way.

All that being said, I’m in no way bashing classical, rhyming poetry! I love it too! I just don’t love when people insist that it’s the only way to do poetry. XD

Aaaaaand that was super long. 😛 I guess I’m more passionate about this than I thought. XD

In regards to music… YES! So much of what I hear on the radio now, (looking at you 101.5) seems to be generic ‘I have troubles but God is good’. My favorite CCM artists are For King and Country and Andrew Peterson. Different styles, but both of these artists have music that I believe dives deeper. Real stories are told, real emotions are shared, and sometimes it makes me cry. (If you want suggestions… Andrew Peterson – World Traveler, Queen of Iowa, Labor of Love. FKAC – God Only Knows, Ceasefire, Proof of Your Love, To the Dreamers)