Secular Free Verse vs. Religious Formal Verse

E.E. Cummings, "The Grasshopper"

 I think there are good reasons why formal poetry the world over preceded free verse and artistic prose. Those reasons are likely to be biological rather than directly connected to religion, but the ancient naturalness of both seem to be connected.

On the other hand, free verse and the non(anti)-formalist verse that followed seem to be distinctly secular in manmade-and-therefore-"unnatural" fashion. (There is nothing unnatural humans do, though there are choices which are more conscious and choices which are more instinctual, even if the latter, in poetry, follows manmade forms.) The anti-formalists often argued that formal verse was antidemocratic, indeed, elitist—while their verse was democratic and anti-elitist. Of course, the opposite was true. People prefer lyrical rock, country, and rap songs to surrealist, LANGUAGE, and postmodern poetry. It was the latter which the masses hated, loving formal verse. 

With the addition of music especially, formal verse seems to tap into a deep Dionysian element that much 20th century free verse and almost all postmodern anti-formalist poetry completely discards in favor of the Apollonian. Formal verse seems to tap into the very rhythms of the universe—including our mental/neural universe—which makes it deeply religious in its experience. This is something free verse, and especially anti-formalist verse, cannot typically create, whatever other interesting elements they may have. In this sense nonformalist poetry is deeply secular insofar as it cannot connect us to those deep rhythms which we describe as religious.

Poetry is likely to have its origins in song. Songs and poetry are the reunion of language and music, which bifurcated from an ancestral primate mating song (think gibbons). Indeed, we know that The Iliad and The Odyssey were sung, and these were religious texts. It seems likely that perhaps most initial songs were connected to religion as well. Of course, if you want to get right down to it, songs and dancing were both likely connected to mating calls and sexual demonstrations (as they still do). At the same time, I am convinced that the emergence of language gave rise to the simultaneous emergence of religion. Which may be why the earliest narratives are religious texts. This double origin of poetry—in sexual music and language-giving-rise-to-religion is probably why there is so much tension with religion and sex in poetry.

If the idea of formal/rhythmic verse being "religious" makes you uncomfortable, think rather of it being connected to the spirit, of being spiritual. There are many spiritual traditions, and they all had formalist kinds of verse associated with them. More than that, if you want your poetry to make a kind of spiritual connection with your audience—if you want a Dionysian element to your poetry—then formalist verse is truly the way to go.

This isn't to say that formalism is superior to non-formal verse. The Modernist non-formalists certainly made some major contributions in the creation of free verse and in surrealist poetry. However, I would argue that, for the most part, postmodern non-formal verse is primarily academic in nature, and the content of such poetry reflects that fact. The academic poets do have something to say, and they do have something to contribute to poetry as a form. What would perhaps be interesting, though, is the synthesis of what the non-formalists have discovered with the spiritualism of the formalists. It doesn't have to be either-or, after all. Both-and can crate some interesting works.