A Blog for Gloria Estefan

I never used to like Robert Frost's poetry until I slowed down. (His work is better on long walks rather than crowded buses.) And although I had earlier strayed from the dangers of singy-songy rhyme, I learned something important about classical or traditional poetry and maybe a little why Frost defended it so stubbornly. It seems many developed the idea that meter and rhyme were too "establishment" and that true expression could only be found elsewhere (in confusing nonsense published beneath pretty covers). But I think this new "free verse" may have gone too far. Perhaps the brilliance of Robert Frost, Sara Teasdale, and even Edgar Guest came from the difficulty of expressing new or collective ideas in a specific format. It's a challenge to present something moving in rhyme; it's hard to hear and capture rhythm.

And this carries into prose. I think rhythm is an essential part of writing order. Some students may not be able to fully identify it in their writing, but it's something intuitive like the dissonance we literally feel in the absence of a tonic note at the end of a melody line. Some musicians can use dissonance to their advantage (like some writers), but order and harmony are generally appreciated. "Flow" is rhythm. Rhythm follows order. Order is therefore somewhat intuitive.