Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt Against Meter
Free verse, contends poet Steele, has become a sort of Frankenstein's monster: the instigators of the modern, nonmetrical revolution in poetry expected free verse to be a "temporary expedient," a salutary but transient antidote to the florid idiom of late Victorian poetry. Instead, "having claimed special liberties for themselves, they found it difficult to persuade their followers to adopt a more restrained approach," and free verse has been the poetic orthodoxy for over a century. From Aristotle to Eliot, Steele surveys in a forthright and limpid style the history of the distinction between poetry and prose. He shows how the Modernists misconstrued the dicta of earlier poetic revolutionaries, identified Victorian diction with meter, and deposed them simultaneously. This is a judicious and intelligent appeal for a revival of metrical verse.- Jeffrey R. Luttrell, Youngstown State Univ., OhioCopyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.