Journal 44: Barbaric Yawp

Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are considered mavericks and nonconformists of poetry. Many critiques dislike Whitman and Dickinson's poetry because they don't see free verses as a form of poetry. They believe that poetry defines a strict and rigid form that conforms to the traditional rhyme scheme and many other poetic rules that unless obeyed, does not qualify as poetry. Whitman and Dickinson challenges this idea by not conforming to the idea of having a set rhyme scheme or having a regular pattern for the sentence structure or length and this is called free verse. There are no rules in free verse poems except that they should include some poetic elements. However, critiques believe that simply including a few poetic techniques does not make writing poems. They believe that poetry is a delicate form of writing and that not following the rules means not writing poetry because the most important essence of what makes poetry unique is the formality. Whitman and Dickinson's free verse opens up a new door for future poets to write in free verse because the pioneers have experimented and challenged the idea and that this act of not conforming to the original strict idea of poetry prompts future writers to experiment on new ideas.