Modern Poetry... Free Verse

I was reading another blog recently, and the guy was discussing how free verse isn't liked by so many people these days. Well, seeing as how there is nothing else but free verse out there these days, I wonder why people think poetry's such a fag. Seriously, have you read these so called 'modern' poems? If you have, honestly, how many of them do you like?
Now see, I have nothing against free verse. In fact, some of that type of poetry is extremely intense and moving. But that's not all there is, now is there? These 'modern' poets have nothing else but free verse, and that really is a cause for concern. They say poems that rhyme can't be serious, that you can't write anything serious if it rhymes. Oh come on! Free verse, except for some, really is just sentences...a break here, and a bloody break there.
What happened to all those poems of the past? They rhymed! You could read them out loud, they flowed off your lips, and you were moved by their beauty, their symmetry, how everything interconnected.
Modern schmodern...
The masters weren't free versing...they wrote symphonies with words, that felt like music without any tune. I say you can't write a love poem in free verse, show me if you can! Something comes to mind, John Keats. 'A thing of beauty' is an extract from an epic he wrote, 'Endymion'. Now that's poetry! Read it out loud and after those fifteen something lines of the extract you're in a different world. You feel what the great man must have felt when his pen was flowing over that paper like a river free. You feel the beauty that those lines describe. Beauty is felt, I've learned.

An endless fountain of immortal drink,

Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

-from Endymion, 1818 by John Keats

THEIR QUIET POWER

In these and such times, 
On days such as this,

Do thoughts, and such rhymes,
Remind me of the bliss,

Of those stolen hours, and those crimes,
That touch of her lips,

The lure of those eyes,
The taste of that kiss.



Times such as these, 
When in the dark of the night,

Does she hear my pleas,
My knowledge of her might,

And she knows, as she sees, 
Not needing the light,

That I’m down on my knees, 
Giving up, without a fight.

Yeah, well...girls do that...

My first post as Editor

Lets begin this thing then. Its just 2.00 am and I'm already feeling sleepy. An hour on and it'll be the darkest hour of the night.
Now, this blog I'm writing now is quite basic, I mean its not essentially about anything, just a place for my 'poems', for you to appreciate, and me to enjoy the appreciation. I'd love to read your comments on them, however nasty.
There's nothing better that I like than criticism, so be brutal with it. Positive commentary will not be neglected either.

A long time ago it seems now, though its only been three years, my English teacher sat down with me at my desk and gave me a book to read. It was a volume of the poems of Vikram Seth, an Indian author I must admit I've never read except on that one occasion. Now, my English teacher, giving me this book said, 'Read these, and tell me about the one you like the most near the end of class.' It was a double period, and as everyone around me struggled with their weekly essay, I sat and read poetry. See, back then, still in the early years of high school, I'd read a bit of Keats, some Wordsworth, and an inkling of Shelley, and let me tell you, Vikram Seth is nowhere near that type of class, but still I read, and an hour later, near the time of the imminent end of class bell, I walked up to my teacher and handed him his book back.
'Well,' he said, 'Did you like anything?'
I hadn't.
'Yes,' I lied.
'Which one?' he said.
I hesitated, and said, 'The one...with the-'
I was interrupted by his sad smile.
'Not that one,' he said, shaking his head. 'Poetry stabs at you, son. And you'd remember if someone stabbed you with a knife, I'm sure. Just like you'd remember a phrase that made your heart skip a beat.'
I looked at him.
'Do tell me when that happens, will you?' he said.
I nodded, smiling.

Two years later, came the stab.

On everyone’s lips was news

            of my death but only that beloved couplet,
            broken, on his:

                            “If there is a paradise on earth
                             It is this, it is this, it is this"

                                                -Agha Shahid Ali
                                                 from "The Last Saffron"

This verse, though broken from its body, still carries for me such power, that I feel weak every time I read it. Agha Shahid Ali, the great Kashmiri poet wrote "The Last Saffron" in his last days, as he was suffering from cancer. I recommend Amitav Ghosh's article "The Ghat of the only world" to anyone interested in learning more.
I have yet to inform my teacher of this first tryst of mine, with beauty in words. But then, since then there have been many more. And many more to come, I hope.

aD out.

The beginning...

Keep a ready eye on the next hilltop,
Watch for a change in the breeze,
When roses will burn and clouds will drop,
And unsteady would seem the trees,
Then will I come, when call you will,
For my name in the darkening night,
When the depths of hell, would the horrors fill,
Look for my form in white.