Friday Links
Evening, Elk Lake
July 18, 2025
Austin Allen on Hard Line Politics: On the Myth of Free Verse
A.M. Juster asks: Can Americans Love Poetry Again?
Luella D’Amico on the The Catholic Morning Show
Malcolm Guite: In Defense of Pint and Pipe
Eleanor Parker on Artificial Inspiration
Austin Allen on Hard Line Politics: On the Myth of Free Verse
This essay aims to deflate one of the most stubborn myths in modern poetry. Roughly stated, the myth goes like this: Metrical verse is politically regressive unless proven otherwise. Free verse is politically progressive unless proven otherwise.
I love meter. I love free verse. I hate this myth. I hate it as I hate any superficial politics — any pressure to display the proper flag or the correct lapel pin. Stigmatizing meter has never freed a prisoner, fed a hungry person, or benefited anyone who wasn’t a poet. Neither has advocating even the most experimental free verse practice. Renouncing meter doesn’t drive away biases or bad ideas; no verse technique can perform that exorcism. A poem’s politics can’t be neatly deduced from its formal surface, or a poet’s politics from her chosen verse style.
A.M. Juster asks: Can Americans Love Poetry Again?
Poetry has been an essential part of many countries’ popular culture for centuries. Italy, Russia, Iran, Chile, Poland, and Nicaragua are good examples, to name just a few. In these places, professors do not have a monopoly on poetry. Cab drivers, accountants, and salespeople will, often with very little provocation, recite a poem from memory. The United Arab Emirates and Qatar even host lucrative poetry competitions televised in the style of American Idol.
Luella D’Amico on the The Catholic Morning Show
LuElla discusses her new work on the beloved classic Pollyanna — diving into the spiritual and cultural significance of the character who famously championed the "Glad Game." What is Optimism and Hope, and how do we learn to be grateful?
Malcolm Guite: In Defense of Pint and Pipe
We live in an age when, at least in the affluent West, there is something of an obsession with bodily health, with healthy lifestyles, healthy eating and drinking, and a constant cycle of new diets, regimens, vitamin supplements, and exercise fads. And of course, attendant on these, and fueling their consumer ratings, a rash of hypochondria, self-diagnosis, health scares based on spurious medical blogs, etc. The one thing all these trends, however helpful or harmful, have in common is an essentially mechanistic and reductive account of health or (in the current jargon) “wellness” itself.
Eleanor Parker on Artificial Inspiration
In the medieval Golden Legend there is a story which purports to explain why the historian Bede is known as ‘the Venerable’, rather than a more common title like ‘Saint’. It claims that after Bede’s death a cleric tried to compose a Latin epitaph for his tomb, but ran into writer’s block. He came up with ‘Hac sunt in fossa Bedae sancti ossa’ (‘Here in this grave are the bones of St Bede’). Unfortunately these lines didn’t scan properly, and he could not work out how to express them better. Frustrated, he gave up and went to bed.