Ah....life

Life is so wonderful isn't it? Unfortunately, it's doesn't approve of my attempts to write a sonnet in imabic pentamameter. Bother! See, I love to write free verse, but I also revel in the challenge posed by a format. Because while letting the words just spill onto the page without regard for structure is an envigorating and freeing experience, there is a definite beauty and comfort to structure. We humans live a chaotic life. If you try to tell me your life is calm, having no chaos, I will have two reactions: What cave have you been living in, and what's your secret? And since chaos is such a large and predictable part of our lives, we have a need for structure and order. There is freedom in structure, simply because we don't have it normally. And there is something comforting about it do, because it's reliable. We know what to expect, what to anticipate. The poem with structure may surprise us, but it won't break completely out of its boundaries. It will have 10 syllables in the first line, 7 in the next, then 10 again. We can expect that, and not worry that we have to be looking for shock. Shock is not the purpose of a poem, beauty is. And beauty is more easily attainable when you aren't worried about suprise in the meter, but rather in the words themselves. Because it is the words that mainly present the point, and the words that invoke the emotions and images in the reader. It is important for poetry to have a structure, so that the reader can focus on the meaning and wording of the poem, and not the question of 'why the heck did this just switch from 18 syllables to 2?'