[Ted Charnley]

He may have been out of the spotlight for a while, but the loss of Lewis Turco is still a loss for formal poetry. He had forgotten more about form and meter than most of us will ever learn. Since 2012, I have kept his Book of Forms as close as any thesaurus or other reference, and it has traveled with me to many conferences.

I only met Lewis once, at West Chester in 2013. After we were introduced (I forget by whom), we had a short discussion about the terzanelle form he had invented by merging the terza rima and villanelle forms. I asked him if he had intended the terzanelle to be a "closed" form; i.e., limited to 19 lines. He responded that he thought of it as a closed form. I then told him that I had written a terzanelle, but it had an extra tercet, so it was 22 lines. Was that ok? He said "that's fine" and made it clear that he had no problem with doing that. That was the extent of the conversation, but for me it served as an example of Lewis' receptiveness to experimentation with forms. He was not the strict, hide-bound formalist he is sometimes presented as. The terzanelle was, after all, one of his many inventions.

I haven't had any contact with Lewis since that one in 2013, but I still feel I owe him a lot as a writer of formal poetry. RIP indeed.

[R. S. Gwynn]

Lew wrote free verse, but he strongly disliked the term, arguing that "verse" by definition was metrical and thus could not be "free." I don't have a copy of The Book of Forms handy, so someone can check what he had to say about it in the later editions. I do know that he discussed, at some point, Hebrew prosody as based on anaphora and other types of repetition, but that doesn't say anything about the length of the lines. To say that Whitman used a prosody based on repetition doesn't say anything about the lines themselves, which can range across the page and more. I may be wrong, but I think Lew argued that free verse was simply prose broken into lines; however, the breaking of groups of words (phrases, sentences) would seem to indicate a type of verse (the old notion of the turn of the plow at the end of the furrow). Thoughts?

[Ted Charnley]

Sam, your memory is pretty good. On p. 224 of The Book of Forms: Revised and Expanded Edition (2012), Lewis wrote this:

Free verse is lineated prose, for if 'verse' is defined as 'metered language' and 'prose' as 'unmetered language,' then the term 'free verse' is a contradiction in terms because 'verse' cannot be 'free,' for it is 'metered.' The only other possibility, then, is that 'free verse' is prose broken into lines, 'lineated' by some means or other . . . .

If you try to look up "free verse" in the General Index of the same edition, you are told to "See prose."

However, we needn't interpret any of this to mean that free verse is somehow not a legitimate style of poetry; merely that the term itself is a misnomer. It might be more appropriate to call such poetry "free of verse."

Also, throughout the book there are a number of exemplary poems by some guy named R. S. Gwynn. Perhaps you know him?

Nice to hear from you again.

Ted

[Ned Balbo]

I agree with Sam: "the breaking of groups of words (phrases, sentences) would seem to indicate a type of verse."

Ted, thanks for reminding us of Lew's terminology. I was too lazy to look it up! He really knew how to spark debate.

Even so, the question of whether free verse is poetry or prose seems like kind of a dead end--to me, anyway. It risks defining poetry by a single aspect: how lines are determined, broken, or enjambed. All the sonics that matter in poetry--as well as its crucial foundation in syntax, pacing, and aural density--are given short shrift. Should we call it "free" verse? "Non-metrical" verse? Who knows? I'll let others sort it out! :-) I'll just keep writing--and, especially, reading--both.

For a more informed perspective than mine, check out Ellen Bryant Voigt's The Art of Syntax: Rhythm of Thought, Rhythm of Song.

[R. S. Gwynn]

Ted, I did know him, but we hadn't spoken in some years because of this free verse/prose argument, about which Lew could be doctrinaire and unyielding. My point was that free verse was lineated and that prose wasn't; a piece of prose in a newspaper is chopped into 30-space lines; the same piece reprinted in a book may appear in 60+ space lines. Prose in print is usually righthand-justified. None of these changes affects its status as prose.

When we see a passage of verse inserted into a prose sentence, its line breaks are indicated by the / (virgule). If the quote is longer than a couple of lines it is indented and printed as it originally appeared. If the lines are measured in some pattern, it's metrical verse; if they're not, it's free.