January 23, 2025
Ah, this poetry, constrained in your rhythm, restrained by your rhyme,
Ah, the coterie, trained to cause schism, “to be chained is your crime.”
High art verses do wrong all the lower classes,
Fine art versus the songs of the gauche-r masses.
Why so highfalutin when poetry was rooted in song
Write homeoteluton*, and suddenly its muted and wrong
The proliferation of alliteration leads to rhyme obliteration,
The consideration of reiteration leads to mind condescension.
The fact that we count each and every syllable,
This act surmounts, teaching us to be criminals.
It used to be that discipline made you a good poetry citizen,
Now to be ignoring tradition makes you a poetry Gideon**.
So let’s move away from any rhyme or rhythm,
Not counting syllables to create the rest of this poem.
If to be a good poet is to ignore tradition and structure,
It seems lazier to write a verse that is free.
And if this poem feels a little offensive,
It is designed to be intentionally subversive,
After all,
…the arrogance of this poem is to be overly clever.
^yes a reference to 1984 as a subversive work, but this footnote is to say that included are the intentional use of rare words to make fun of the rarified words often used in modern high poetry forms that require prior knowledge:
*coterie – an intimate and often exclusive group of persons with a unifying common interest or purpose
**homeoteluton is also known as near rhyme
***Gideon- the reluctant warrior who overcomes doubt to answer God’s call