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Most literary authors are now embracing the style of free verse because of it's adaptability and simplicity, apart from the fact that it is easy to write it allows an poet the ability to blend into their own pattern of writing and create a unique writing pattern that will be not be judged by rules in situations like being a sonnet poet or a poet who writes blank verses.
Free verse is a poem that does not rhyme or have a rhythm, it's also known as a poem that allows importation and allows for the use of poetic freedom, by this I mean poets will no longer be guided by the law of English language, like capitalization and proper spellings of words.
Here is a free verse from my piece THE COMING OF NIGHT (An Original poetry ) đź“ť
Babies clunged to mother's breasts
like an infant leech,
on the fibre of the tree mushrooms
sweet lullabies and gentle patting
to Woo sleep into fragile one
men enclosed in raffia roof,
puffing to the oriental delight
and gulping the tree wine like a river nymph
filling their belly to it's peak
crashing out to the canoodle of slumber
the children are basking in the daylight of the moon.
While the grey heads tell realistic fables.
we welcome the rhythmic buzzing of the mosquitoes
as they grin from ear to ear in delight;
singing unwanted symphony
Poem Written by @Josediccus
The capitalization was limited and the law of stanzaic division was disobeyed in the sense that one stanza had nine feet and the other stanza had six feet (lines) in basic blank verse standard this is totally wrong because in blank verses, there is always a measurement of the metric arrangements in other words (iambic pentameter) which is the containment of five stressed syllables and five unstressed syllables in a particular feet in a verse of a blank verse, howbeit it's totally not ryhming. There are basically no secondary rule to follow in writing free verses, just like there are no secondary rules in writing Haiku but the primary rule of three lines, vividly about nature and it's occurrences and the simplicity of the theme.
As seen, the poem was hardly rhyming, neither did it have a regular rhythmic flow, because this will hindering the passage of the theme. Free verses always have elaboration and complicating subject matter and theme, because it allows for sophistication because of it's limited rules.
BLANK VERSES.
This is a very difficult style of poetic writing, almost archaic in nature. The Englishmen were the one who started this pattern of writing. In the Elizabethan era, it was written in the old type of English presumably the one use to translate the bible around the 15th and 16th century. A blank verse basically resembles a sonnet in my years of comparing them both they both have a metric arrangement/pattern but the difference is that sonnet have a particular and unique style of rhyme scheme in both the Italian and English sonnet but blank verses have no rhyme at all.
The difficult in writing and coining stressed syllables and unstressed syllable in a feet makes blank verses very tiresome and cumbersome as well and that's why it's considered mundane and even ignored by most modern writers of the 21st century.
IRREGULAR POEM PATTERN WITH NO STANZAIC DIVISION
This is writing a poetic piece without a stanza or verse pattern it could be a certain foot dabbled in couplets or a few words enjambed without proper obedience of the poem/verse/stanza rule.
This is rampant amongst African writers,Ngugi wa Thiong’o Wole Soyinka and even John Pepper Clark. They take free verse to a certain level of depth.
This is an Irregular Poem with no STANZAIC division or pattern also a very advanced style of free verse by Niyi Osundare.
Hole in the Sky By Niyi Osundare
Koko gbakokodi
Koko didikokodi
“Tell my story,”
Said the Earth to me,
“Oh, tell my story the way it is.
Don’t sugarcoat its bile
Don’t varnish its rust
Don’t cover its scars with pretty words
Tell my pain the way it is
The way it is
The way the way the way it is
Tell my pain, the way it is.”
Koko gbakokodi
Koko didikokodi
There is a total importation of Westernized African Yoruba language imported into this free verse that shows total control of poetic license by the poet. The poem itself shows an irregular pattern, although it's a bit lyrical, like a lyre on a ballad, which definitely can be sung, however it's a free verse.
REFRENCE; NIYI OSUNDARE'S HOLE IN THE SKY
Written, edited & analysed
By @Josediccus
9/9/2018
"Steemian Mantra"
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JOSEPH C.IKECHUKWU
