Word: verse
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Mere artifice will carry one farther in verse than in prose. Perhaps this is why one finds the verse in this number somewhat more interesting than the stories. Whether it indicates a change of editorial policy or not, the absence of vers libre is worthy of comment. Most of the verse is in stricter forms and Mr. Hillyer even turns back the clock of the years to write a very dainty and winsome triolet...
This little book by J. Pitts Sanborn '00 contains a prefatory sonnet and 17 poems in "vers libre," 17 quick glances at the city of Bordeaux in war time. Mr. Sanborn's love for Bordeaux is sincere, if we may judge from these lines in the sonnet:
...there. And in the second place isn't form all-important anyway? For snatches of life, for casual comments, for detached thoughts that would not be improved by reaching symmetrical harmony, vers libre may be quite in keeping. But that is only saying that for certain types of verse the best form is a lack of form. There is always the dangerous temptation to express in free verse thoughts that might be more perfectly expressed otherwise. And it is that danger that has led some unkind people to characterize free verse as a vehicle for half-baked thoughts...
...furnish an admirable example of the proper use of vers libre, and all in all the best in the number. In the light of the title the whole might be more subtly forceful without the last two lines, for they are distinctly anticlimatic. Mr. Garrison's venture into formless verse is likewise successful, but the other two representatives of this school were better undone...
...poetry is full of much sound and fury, signifying, no, not nothing, but the usual state of unrest in youthful, bosoms. The verse of Mr. Norris is even graceful, if nothing else; his "August Night" is an example of free verse more sincere and pleasing than is often found among the poems of the High Priestess of vers libre. Mr. Putnam translates a Horatian ode into blank verse; since Horace does better in a swinging meter, an appreciative translation loses interest. Mr. Parson's free verse seems strained and unhappy; the idea of the same poet's "Art" deserves...