Free verse seemed democratic because it offered freedom of access to writers. And those who disdained free verse would always be open to accusations of elitism, mandarinism. Open form was like common ground on which all might graze their cattle - it was not to be closed in by usurping landlords.

James Fenton

James Fenton

Access Accusation Always Because Cattle Closed Common Common Ground Democratic Elitism Form Free Free Verse Freedom Ground Landlords Like Might Offered Open Seemed Those Verse Which Who Would Writers

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Metrics are not a device for restraining the mad, any more than 'open form' or free verse is a prairie where a man can do all kinds of manly things in a state of wholesome unrestrictedness.

— James Fenton

Their free verse was no form at all, yet it made history.

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The voice is raised, and that is where poetry begins. And even today, in the prolonged aftermath of modernism, in places where 'open form' or free verse is the orthodoxy, you will find a memory of that raising of the voice in the term 'heightened speech.'

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Modernism in other arts brought extreme difficulty. In poetry, the characteristic difficulty imported under the name of modernism was obscurity. But obscurity could just as easily be a quality of metrical as of free verse.

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Food is our common ground, a universal experience.

— James Beard

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