Why doesn modern poetry scan properly?
Of course you can have poetry that doesn’t follow the strict conventions of rhyme and metre, but if the poet rejects these time-honoured frameworks, he/she should have something well controlled and considered to put in their place. The modernists would argue that, just as real life is haphazard and unpredictable, so a reliance on rhyme and too regular a metre would give a false impression of that reality. This doesn’t mean, of course that “in poetry you can do what you want, and to hell with the reader”. Poetry is about isolating a thought or experience and rendering it accessible, and therefore universal, through the medium of precise, concentrated language. Throw out all the rules, and communication, and therefore the poem itself, fails. There are situations in which traditional forms such as the sonnet are the perfect medium for the message, and situations in which a freer form comes closer to conveying the experience. In any case, the poet (and reader) should be aware of the use of
