AustLit

Author's abstract : A.D. Hope was completely out of sympathy with T. S. Eliot's poetic practice, yet the two poets expressed very similar views on the subject of free verse - that the term is virtually an oxymoron. This essay examines the critical writings of Hope and Eliot, in order to locate precisely the characteristics of free verse (and, incidentally, of all poetry!). We see that Eliot's verse always at least alludes to traditional verse form. I contrast this with the poems of D.H. Lawrence, the weaker of which are completely prosaic, and the stronger of which are not really free verse. We see that Lawrence's explanations for his procedures are not grounded like Hope's and Eliot's in a rational presentation of formal characteristics, but a subjective assessment of emotional effects. By contrast, Hope's achievement is to have maintained the vitality of almost purely formal verse, as a satiric genius in the tradition of Dryden and Pope.