The Net of History

Robert Frost remarked, or so I've read, that writing free verse is like playing tennis without a net. He wanted rhyme and meter to lend structure, which I totally get. But when people ask me why my verse doesn't use end of the line rhymes, I say that narrative poems give me structure enough. I want to tell a short story within one poem and link it to a longer story in others. Along with repeated imagery, that gives me enough sense of a frame.

Writing about history makes me consider two major audiences, while most are probably in the middle. One group knows little about the era I'm writing about, and I have to set a stage without making the furniture look obviously arranged. The group at the other end knows a lot, and anything that looks a smidge out of place may jar them from the dream a poem sets out to be. I have to teach a bit, but not look like I am, and I have to research like crazy to get the details right. Then get back to just what I want to say, which tends to be about anyone who might live at any time. Because with all the fading wallpaper or mud brick walls, ladder-back chairs or a rock in ancient Iraq, what I write is really about how nothing changes much. Over the years and centuries, people, I believe, are much like you and me. And that's what brings me back to my own shiny laptop on an old wooden desk.