What Is <i> True </i> Poetry? It All Depends on Whom You Ask

My wholehearted support goes to Prof. Timothy Steele of Cal State Los Angeles (“To Rhyme or Not to Rhyme--That Is the Poet’s Question,” Jan. 19).

If it doesn’t employ meter, rhyme and form, you can be sure it isn’t poetry. Those creatures who scrawl disjointed, dissociated words in fragmented lines on a page should come up with another name for their output.

TROXEY KEMPER

Los Angeles

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A poem works Or it doesn’t For the poet And the reader Whether it’s free Verse stream of consciousness or iambic Pentameter Delivered by quatrains, couplets or the Bloody feet Of a beautiful ballerina Or a pipe bomb That explodes Flinging pieces of brain and sounds We’re surprised to find Are words. A poem is as Powerful As anything That cannot be destroyed. Yet we all know Masterpiece after masterpiece Will not buy us A Rolls Royce REX MAURICE OPPENHEIMER

Los Angeles

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Writing in a formal structure shows a discipline and commitment to excellence that is thrilling, Kate Braverman notwithstanding.

As for Braverman, I am mystified why she invokes Freud, Einstein, freedom and the progress of women in her attempt to limit poetic expression to her chosen style. Is this not the antithesis of what poetry embraces?

Methinks she does protest too much! The zeitgeist of Los Angeles resides in all its diverse citizens, not in the very narrow view of Braverman.

MADERE M. OLIVAR

Los Angeles

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To say that rhyme and metered verse are dead, Or to despise their writers or their age, Proves nothing true or tangible is said When words are free to fly about the page. JACQUELINE L. FOX

Pasadena

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For two decades I have published critiques of poetry, reviewed the genre regularly, have taught at UC Irvine for 30 years and have published numerous volumes of poetry, fiction and plays. I have also won my share of grants and prizes.

I agree with Kate Braverman’s attack on this verse. Braverman gives perspective. As a native Southern Californian and a poet and novelist of considerable stature (Why wasn’t she included in that anthology? And Charles Bukowski? And Vert Meyers, William Pillin and Steve Richmond? And Charles Webb?), Braverman writes about Los Angeles from the inside with a rare, controversial and authentic voice.

It’s surprising given the disrepute of rhymed verse ever since “Howl” appeared in the early 1950s that it’s still an issue. Earlier Amy Lowell (bless her), Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams pioneered a fresh free-verse idiom.

The poem of Steele’s you published must please the Edgar Guests of American poetry who hanker for those antediluvian days of William Cullen Bryant and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Like a piece of Kleenex, Steele’s poem is utterly disposable.

ROBERT PETERS

Huntington Beach

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This dispute over meter and rhyme, I’ve heard it time after time. The very avant-gardist poet Insists, “It is dead and you know it.” While the stubborn traditionalist type Says, “Free Verse is just so much tripe And nothing beats Keats.” So onward we go with the battle, With volumes of pro and con prattle Gertrude Stein would have made it quite terse: A verse is a verse is a verse. WALT HOPMANS

Santa Barbara