No strength of man, or fiercest wild beast, could withstand?...
Which first shall I bewail,
Thy bondage or lost sight,
Prison within prison
Inseparably dark?
That is indeed admirable, and not so easy to write as it looks. But some kind of vers libre can be turned out by anyone; and to encourage the use of this medium will be to encourage and vastly increase that multitudinous body of humble and industrious versifyers who are at present the most conspicuous ornament of American literature.
The Decorative Straight-Jacket: Rhymed Verse
Maxwell Bodenheim
The clamping of the inevitable strait-jacket, rhymed verse, upon the shrinking form of poetry has been the pastime of centuries. Those who would free poetry from the outworn metal bands and let her stretch her cramped limbs are labeled decadent, slothful, and futile. How easy it is to paste disagreeable labels upon the things one happens to dislike.
I admit that poetry freed from the bonds she has so long worn may become vulgar and over-demonstrative. A convict who has just been released from a penitentiary is perhaps inclined to caper down the road, and split the air with good red shouts. But after his first excesses he walks slowly, thinking of the way before him. With some poets free verse is still the boisterous convict; with others it is already the sober, determined individual. But I rather like even the laughing convict, looking back and flinging huge shouts at his imposing but petty prison.