In this particular essay, which includes Woody Guthrie’s Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee), I endeavoured to clearly understand how poetry is done. Actually, I didn’t find it hard to determine whether the poem is in closed form or in free verse since the lack of pattern of rhyme is not present. Nevertheless, there was just a continual assessment for assurance whether the poem is truly in free verse.
What I find difficult is to examine how the element of rhyme affects the meaning of the poem. This is also for the case of line length. Although the poem does not absolutely have different in line length, I believe the poem if in free verse. I just couldn’t find any poem that doesn’t follow any standard rhyme and line length, and that I can fully understand. In turn, I just chose Guthrie’s. Anyway, the change in my understanding of the work is about the form. I initially thought that it is in closed form (it was due to the line length), but seeing the lack of rhyme patterns, I now believe that such poem is in free verse.
Again, I hope that my instructor would evaluate this paper for comprehension, clarity, and accuracy of my analysis of the poem. Also, I would ask that he examine whether there are technical errors in my writing, including the formatting style.
There are basically two forms of poetry in terms of structure: the “closed” form or the traditional form and the “open” form or the “free verse”. They differ from each other in that the “open” form is free from the traditional rule for rhymes and lines, and simply uses more subtle rhythm and imagery (Muller and Williams 51). However, it should be noted that although free verse allows a poet to express his/her thoughts beyond the boundaries of the traditional form, he/she may still adapt some of its techniques in order to make some sense of good poetic structure.
This is explicitly expressed in Woody Guthrie’s Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee). As being in a free verse form, the poem goes without any standard rhyme; the last word for each consecutive line does not have the same sound. Now this element – which is rhyme – has significant effect on the meaning of the poem. It allows deeper expression and further representation of the poet’s message. In following the closed form, one had to find a word that will suit to the rhyme of the line(s) in a stanza. In fact, as in the case of the America Folksong’s Go Down, Moses, others are tend to just repeat the same line(s) even if it longer has absolute relevance to the [main] thought implied in the stanza. In such case, the meaning of the stanza – which affects the meaning of the poem as a whole – may not be explicitly expressed. In Woody Guthrie’s poem, however, the thought is explicitly expressed. The expression of how the speaker experienced the mistreatment is observable in each stanza. If Guthrie would use the traditional form of having standard rhyme applied throughout the entire poem, each stanza would likely not have such more explicit expression of the poem’s meaning. Thus, that is the effect of the free verse on the meaning of the poem. Allowing the use of words that accurately conveys the meaning of the poem implied in each line and stanza, regardless of not having standard patterns of rhyme, free verse makes the meaning of the poem clearly understood.
Another element of the poetic form that has significant effect on the meaning of the poem is the line length. This could be somewhat similar to rhyme. Being in a free verse form, a particular poem is allowed to consist of more words and/or syllables in each line. However, this is not very much explicit in Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee); the syllables are almost the same for the lines in each stanza. Nevertheless, this idea of having lines greater length is greatly explicit in other poems that are in “free verse”. As aforementioned, this affects the meaning of the poem, wherein it allows more words that accurately expressed the meaning [implied in each line or stanza] to be included. Instead of using words that are more of abstract (this allows the poet to have fewer words in each line), the poet puts more words until the meaning to be implied by each line or stanza is understood.
The use of the closed form or free verse is not a very big issue for most of the poets. Some prefer the closed form, and some prefer the other. Nevertheless, the great advantage of the free verse is the permission for the poet to explicit more words in any line and stanza until the desired implication is there. In this way, the message of the entire poem is more likely to be understood by most of the readers – particularly those who cannot understand short poetic works.
Works Cited
America Public University System. ENGL 200: Composition and Literature. New York:
McGrawHill, 2011. E-book.
