In the society in which we live in today, the classical style of writing poetry seems to have been forgotten. We label it as old-fashioned – which basically means dull, unfresh, non-existent.
Instead of viewing both poetry with verse and poetry without verse as two equal components (seeing that there’s nothing wrong with each one of them), the popular opinion has now put modern poetry in the limelight and thrown classical poetry in the garbage can.
(For those of you who don’t know this, modern poetry is a poem without verse.)
The fact that rhyming has gone out of fashion is very sad. But some of us are still fighting to change it. Because whether you like to believe it or not …
VERSE IS NOT DEAD.
It just exists in a different form; Namely in music.
If you take a close look out there, some popular songs are just magnificently written. Put it on paper, and you have a classical poem.
Don’t believe me?
Take this song by Leonhard Cohen:
The Gypsy’s Wife
I’ve heard all the wild reports, they can’t be right
But whose head is this she’s dancing with on the threshing floor
whose darkness deepens in her arms a little more
And where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight?
Where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight?
A ghost climbs on the table in a bridal negligee
She says, “My body is the light, my body is the way”
I raise my arm against it all and I catch the bride’s bouquet
Too early for the rainbow, too early for the dove
These are the final days, this is the darkness, this is the flood
And there is no man or woman who can’t be touched
But you who come between them will be judged
Or this song, by the famous rock-band; Pink Floyd:
Time
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
Racing around to come up behind you again.
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I’d something more to say.
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence
Narrow streets of cobblestone
‘Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you”
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence