Free Verse In American Literature

Introduction

Williams C Williams is an American poet, writer and physician. He was closely associated with the imagism and modernism. He was of the view that poetry should be written in a different and non-conventional form. He propagated that poetry must conform to the democratic values that ensure freedom and free verse. The new verse in a conscious form will provide the strength to the message of the poem. The poet was concerned with the US culture and society, which drove him to articulate democratic values through his poetry. The poems of Mariana Moore also provide a reformative and free verse structure. The American poets have positively engaged in Americanisation through their writings.

Discussion

In ‘To the Snail,’ Mariana Moore has chosen the snail, which is different from the actual snail. The language and the form used by the writer employ a dissimilar ending. The poetess has also exemplified how a poem should be written. The fundamental issue with any poetry is the construction of form and style in which the writer tries to convey the message. The fundamental issue, according to the Moore poem, should address the reformative and non-conventional style of the poem. The snail having no feet is the one way of ending the poem, or it can be ended without any conclusion. Free verse provides the readers to easily analyze the poem without having any complexity in understanding the purpose and surface of the poem.

A very fine poetic style is used by Moore, which speaks of the cultural voices and opinions by concealing her disapproval of the rules of poetry (Azambuja, 2015). She implied a humorous image in her poem. The entire poem moves along the snail’s antennas because the lines go from long to shorter and short. The style of the poem reveals that there could be a number of ways to express the poetic ideas and messages. It is not the law or the regulation to keep up with one or a traditional style of writing poetry. William C Williams was also propagating the same view that things should be expressed in a different style and imagery. Similarly, Moore provides us with an example of how much is rewarding experiences with innovative language and its forms.

More was a tireless and unforgiving writer of his poems. Her works and the collection of poems unfolded the two different angles of her thoughts. One view holds the sacrosanct, while the second moves for the restoration (Moore, 2017). She left her poem unrevised. The poem is the best example of a zoological allegory. The fable was always her fine and significant mental space. It let her collaborate with a beautiful mixture of visual description and moral judgment. The poem of Moore introduced a new kind of modesty, which is also linked with psychological contractility. She forces her reader to watch the snail and notice the pliable and perceptive tentacles. The two short horns at the front of the head and two sensitive behind require the attention of the reader.

The snail is primarily sensitive to its environment, and the same happens with the modest and noble person. The biological contractility is by no means a symbol of modesty, however, the writer as acutely implies the connection and convey her message in a new style of the poetry. The style is not only the fitting of the best words into the best words. It possesses certain other means and definitions. Successfully, the writer has transferred the negatives and the abstractions to the noticeable snail (Moore, 2017). The lines of the poem end with the colon, and the list begins with the absence of the feet. Critics of the poem opined that it is a witty allusion to the free verse. A fundamental demonstration of compression was also in the poem.

Moore expresses the beauty of compression in her poem. She also carefully designed the structure of the poem. All the lines of the poem start with one vertical line, and the lines are also shorter and more organized. The using of the space appears to disseminate the primary message of her poems. The implication of the particular insects also shows that she wanted to form sarcasm for the poets and readers. ‘In the absence of the feet,’ the individual has to depend on other means to stand and support the weight of the body. It is like that of the poet who lost in the poem and wanted to have a commanding base. All the humans in a democratic or non-democratic system desired contractility.

Mariana, in her works, emphasizes the quality of freedom and implies free verse. True democratic values are often found in her collection of work. In her poem, ‘The Paper Nautilus,’ she uses the same form, structure and message that is conveyed by the Williams Carlos. The form and the meter of the poem are in the free verse (Moore, 2017). ‘The Paper Nautilus’ is the official version of poetry which written in the free verse. There is no regular meter and no rhyme scheme. Moore comes up with the wonderful line breakup of the poem. The break between the second and the third line is trembling.

A phrase carries a break in the works of Moore and provides the arbitrary and a bit clumsy. A huge weighty pause along with the break of line and incorporation of the pretty word ‘in’ and we are forced to end the phrase, with the beginning of a new line confuses the readers. It is a kind of feeling that readers are jerking around. Poetry in the latest Moore style resists the way where poetry is primarily organized and structured (Cureton, 2017). Modern poetry refused to follow the proper rhyme and scheme. Other than the kinds of free verse poetry, the poem is highly structured with the verse turned free. Similarly, despite the shift of the poet from the worldly figures to the sea animals, she maintains the powerful relation between both and presents the similarities and differences.

The mutual freedom of the eggs and shell calls back the shoddy enclosures of the authorities in the opening lines of the poem. Moore intensifies the relations between the Nautilus and her eggs by recalling the interaction and association of the authorities. She repeated the image of sight while using ‘watched eggs’ and heightened by the pun on ‘see’ and unfolded the blindness of the worldly figures. The lines at the end describe the beautiful message of the poem for the readers. The line reveals that love is not trapped, but it is processed by reciprocal freedom and protection. The poem effects by referring back to the previous words. It is like that of the mind, which refers back to the previous thoughts and processes.

The poem is concerned with the struggle of an individual who wants to come up with the basic issues of contemporary life. The interest of the others and the self-interest are the focused points in the poem. The readers also have given the problems of the society in 1940. The Maginot line is the description of the eastern front of France, which provides false security to its builders and neighbors (Fraser, 2017). It was supposedly indestructible. The decision of the US to participate in World War II is considered by the critics as the central theme of the poem. Effects of the freedom and the definition of the love as ‘the only fortress/strong enough to trust to’ unfolded the meaning of the poem.

The idea of love in the poem is also described by Marianna Moore in the unconventional style of the poem. It is presented in such a way that the mind works through the meaning of love (Mariani, 2016). The poet did not change the convictions mercurially; instead pivoted from an honest attempt to come to the description of the complexity of human relationships. A good illustration is the pattern used for the conversation in the poem. The use of the pattern for the war in Vietnam provides the view that independence and freedom are the core ideas of the poem. The philosophy of William Carlos is positively described by the poet with the following of the free verse structure. The non-traditional ways of describing the events also show that the poet wanted to change a regular style of writing poetry. The poet erases the entire syllabic structure through her revision of the poem.

Through a long editing process, the poem has significantly achieved free verse. It is different from the spontaneous writing. The poem is distinguished from the poem Howl of the Allen Ginsberg. Howl was written with a fixed poetic structure in order to imitate. Individuals are not going to be spouting out the couplets in the iambic pentameters when readers are ticked off. However, the poem of Moore shows that he controlled the free verse. ‘The Paper Nautilus’ ends without having any fixed structure through the constant erasing and tweaking of the poem. In the same way, William Carlos has also negated the concept of the traditional style of writing poetry.

William Carlos takes the gradual evolution and significance of the American idiom and localism. He focused on the objects and everyday figures. The poet developed the classical allusion and straying from work a day (Ruland, 2016). He moved to the free verse, which suited his contemporary works. In 1920, he published the poem which was Portrait of a Lady. The poem has no connection with the novel by Henry James with the same title. The poem revolves around the passion of the lady with reference to the French painter. The readers of the poem can understand the conversation of the speaker and his intentions towards the innocent romance of Watteau (Mariani, 2016). True representation and reflection of the feeling of the writer by the Fragonard. The imagery of the women refers to the lower half, knees to the southern breeze, and ankles to the tall grass. Comparing the female parts with the things is natural and convention from the Renaissance times.

William’s poem describes the frustrating and futile attempts to unfold the feelings and the experiences. Comparison with the sky of the lady and then a description of the sky is an attempt by the writer to reveal the insights and feelings of Carlos. The poem is the accurate process of writing and the best way of conveying the message. The distraction in the flow of ideas leads to the free verse and open poem. After the distraction of the poem, it comes back to the comments of frustration and the translation of the emotions, feelings and experiences into the words. The poet believes that the invention of poetry is not disentangled from the situation of its generation. Similarly, he follows with free verse, and modernized writing can enlarge the vision of the readers.

William was part of the revolutionary movement and the modernistic poetic revolution. The ideological and technical hybridity of the Williams differs from the poetic counterparts. He found the American culture wanting, and many writers moved to the European region. Other than the international poets, he prefers and voice for the contribution of local poets. The purpose was that local poets reflect the real picture of American society. The Americanisation of the pastoral and the epic contributed to the poetic structure, which affected the authentic American culture and norms (Svensson, 2016). Many popular anthologies are used in the poem.

Literary critics are of the view that the poem f William Carlos is a dialogue between the men and women. Due to the structure of free verse, the poem does not support the main language of the poetry. The poet has put the quality of freedom in the poem. He tries to present it to the readers in a new and conscious form. All the elements of the environment and American society are also incorporated by the writer (Cureton, 2017). The truth and the democratic values in the poem can be analyzed through a structural examination of the poem. As an American poet, he also engages the lines with the phenomena he presented for a modernized and collaborative society. Restrictions and formalities in the structure and patterns of the poem lead to the suppression of many ideas. The conventional and traditional style of writing poetry is not fair for the field. American society needs to be reformed and reconstructed through the innovative and open writings of poetry.

The writing goal of William Carlos was to reveal the American experiences through the introspection of ordinary subjects. The highly visual and imagistic style of the poet sparked the imagistic movement in American literature. He was well-experienced as a doctor and implied figurative words and phrases along with urban colloquialisms in writing his poetry. The deceptively casual writing of Williams provides the readers with more than the meaning of the appeared words. Through his writing, he was considered a visual poet because of his awareness of the appearance of words on the poetic pages. Regarding the form and rhyme, he was considered and well known for pushing the boundaries and chose to write in a deceptively casual style.

In the same way, he wrote a poem ‘Spring and All’ with the same style of disruptive writing. There is no meter or rhyme in the poem. The lines are free from both literary elements (Williams, 2016). He was interested in the fancy tradition of poetic writings. Literary circles have continuously described Williams as the writer of free verse. There is no regulation of ideas and thoughts along with the conventional rules of poetry. He works hard to get out of the old things traditions of writing things. As he was modernist in his approach, he also preferred to choose the modern poetic style. In ‘Spring and All,’ he chooses the same style with an unpretentious and direct approach to the issues in the poem (Cureton, 2017). The availability of the rhyme in the literary text is not essential for the form of the text.

The choice of words and the arrangement of the lines, along with the use of the images in the text, are essential to creating effects. Well The design and precise composition of the poem influence the minds of the readers. The poem of William Carlos is short, simple and possesses unpretentious images. The focus of the text was on the clarity and the sharpness. Most of Williams’s poems are the reflection of his personal life experiences. He discovers the poetry in the world revolving around him (Williams, 2016). The simplicity of the text shows that William does not want to choose fancy references to history in his writing. Spring and All was extracted from the books which include different kinds of imaginative ideas and thoughts.

Spring is a pretty important aspect of the poem. It was developed from the weird character, taking on almost human characteristics. It has changed the world of poetry. The spring was described as sluggish and dazed. The words are generally used by humans in their routine conversation. By personifying the object, Williams gives the lesson to the readers. In the same way, the profound changes of the arrival of spring unfolded the innovations and changes that were coming during the 20^th century. War was ended, and people were moving towards the spring with the production of new art, philosophy and scientific inventions. The spring is always a symbol of the new beginning. However, Williams has a specific message in the disruptive lines of his poem (Williams, 2016).

Williams has confidently implied the relation between nature and man. He pointed out the different aspects of the nature of the environment, which comes after the road and hospital. Places are the major symbols of the human world. He told through the text that man and nature are separate, but they have certain links and relationships. In our world of the roads and the hospitals, we have lost the participation in the world of nature. In the same way, the poem is the allegory of the spiritual rebirth (Fraser, 2017). Animals, humans and plants are part of the natural world and go through the cycle of death. The writing style of the poet shows that at the end of the poem, everything has changed, which means that it lacks the chronological pattern and possesses the structure of free verse.

The poem begins with a straightforward set of images and impressions, which moves into the quickened vision. The first four stanzas of the poem consist of the succession, which is minute fixations. Those minute changes afterwards with the more resolute observations of the connoisseurs of the perceptions. Subtle changes in the stanza single shifts in the perspective of Williams Carlos. The text of the poem appeals ironically to the reverie tradition of English poetry. Similarly, the poem unfolded the related with respect, awe, and wonder before the process of life takes form. The text ‘They enter the new world naked’ allows the process of birth in the vegetative realm, which is associated with human birth.

The prose context of the poem in ‘Spring and All’ is the book which is the renewal of the imagination. It suggested that Williams had a concept in his mind about the rebirth of the new forms of poetry (Williams, 2016). The creative force operates biologically in nature and higher level in the consciousness to create the art. Collaborating the elements of nature and the humanistic life in the poem, Williams Carlos has the idea that poetry must have new forms, which could enlarge the vision of the readers and poets. For that matter, he negates the traditional rules and regulations for the structure and the composition of meter and rhyme in his poetic text.

Conclusion

Concluding the discussion, it is to say that American verse must have the quality of freedom in the writings. For the incorporation of new and developed ideas, American writers will have to understand the new patterns and structures of the poetic text. The two poems of Marian Moore exemplify the philosophy of Williams Carlos and approach the readers with different and innovative styles. Carlos has practically transformed his humanistic ideas into the text of modern poetry.

Works Cited

Azambuja, Enaiê Mairê. “Human and animal in ‘the Open’: an exploration of image and wording in the poetry of Marianne Moore and João Cabral de Melo Neto.” (2015).

Churchill, Suzanne W. The little magazine Others and the renovation of modern American poetry. Routledge, 2017.

Cureton, Richard. “Readings in Temporal Poetics: Four Poems by William Carlos Williams.” Style 51.2 (2017): 187-206.

Fraser, George Sutherland. Metre, rhyme and free verse. Vol. 7. Taylor & Francis, 2017.

Mariani, Paul. William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked. Trinity University Press, 2016.

Moore, Marianne. New Collected Poems. INTERNATIONAL EDITION, 2017.

Ruland, Richard, and Malcolm Bradbury. From puritanism to postmodernism: a history of American literature. Routledge, 2016.

Svensson, Jimmie. “Iconicity in Verse: Overview, Examples, and Challenges.” The American Journal of Semiotics (2016).

Williams, William Carlos. “Spring and All, XIV.” Poets. org. Acad. of Amer. Poets, nd Web 31 (2014).