American Poetry Today

Poetry seemed to be a lot more poplar in the past.  Before there was free verse, poetry was also a lot harder to write. There were a lot more rules like rhymes and rhythms to poems.  I feel like it’s the rules that create the challenge to writing poetry and also makes it much more interesting to read. Compared to other types of poems, free verse seems to be the most common type of poem nowadays. Although they are also interesting pieces to read, I feel like free verse doesn’t possess as much rhythm to it, which I think is what makes reading poems more entertaining. In American life today, the most popular type of “poem” would be song lyrics. Even in pop songs, there are rhymes and certainly rhythm and beats to them. Song lyrics often strive to be catchy so the lyrics are often written with similar techniques as poems. In the past, people would recite poems for plain pleasure. Today, we would more often hear people singing to all kinds of songs. I think people started to prefer songs to poems because there is a tune to it. It offers the same pleasure of reading a poem, but is even better because there is music that makes it all the more colorful.