Abolition's Public Sphere Book

This is a thoughtful, indeed, an intriguing commentary on the poetic arts. Poets and lovers of poetry alike can learn much from Miller Williams' assessments of both the techniques and the pyrotechnics of writing poetry.
Here is a blatantly brief summary: a formal metrical, rhymed poem is a poem. Let's move on.
Williams offers a deadening, technical reference to so-called free verse. He doesn't really discuss it or evaluate it in any substantial way.
This is a grand disappointment for me, because Williams achieves so much less than he promises.
His grand aim is to illuminate the making of poetry, but in the matter of free verse, he almost literally says nothing about the heart of the poem as he slogs through a recitation of most of the poet's techniques that are not incorporated in free verse. He ignores any recognition of the varieties of poetic meaning and impact that are facilitated'indeed, augmented'by free verse.
I won't quarrel for hours with Williams about his definition of free verse: everything that isn't "formal poetry" with "a set metrical pattern and usually with rhyme."
Of course, some poems have more regular and persistent meter, and some have less, even none; some poems are more rigidly and mechanically rhymed than others, and some are a mile away from a rhyme. On this Williams and I have cozy agreement.
Nevertheless, Williams' polite and professional disdain for free verse is obvious. His definition is superficial, and it does not satisfy.
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