How should people learn to write poetry?
52 votes
Start with free-form, and stick to it.
Start with fixed-form, and stick to it.
Start with fixed-form until they're comfortable, then move on to free-form.
Start with free-form until they're comfortable, then move on the fixed-form.
Experiment with both until they find what they like best.

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toxic-nebulae's avatar
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HaveTales-WillTell's avatar
Robert Frost famously said that writing free verse was akin to playing tennis with the net down.

While I'm not quite as hardline as he was, I have to agree with *williamfdevault's contention: until you've internalized the rules, you won't grok how to break them in any meaningful way. The result is often pretty to look at, but without deeper meaning: the literary equivalent of flower arrangement.

(This applies to prose as well. For all that I'm willing to bend the rules in my own work, I'm a fascist when it comes to unintentional errors in spelling, punctuation or grammar.)