Free Form - yay or nay...

I have no quarrel with it. Look of course at Walt Whitman. Here's how Poets.org defines poetry:

poetry: An inexplicable (though not incomprehensible) event in language; an experience through words. Jorge Luis Borges believed that “poetry is something that cannot be defined without oversimplifying it. It would be like attempting to define the color yellow, love, the fall of leaves in autumn.” Even Samuel Johnson maintained, “To circumscribe poetry by a definition will only show the narrowness of the definer.”

I guess to me the best definition is "the perfect word in the perfect place." I would say the defining essence is intense communication of feelings. Whatever form works. If the line blurs between flash fiction and poetry, so what? It's the communication of the feeling or experience that matters.

Poetry like many other things is subjective. I wouldn't say that free form is bad. It's a matter of thinking about what you want to do with your poetry ultimately. Some publications may not allow free form. I have nothing against it.

Free form isn't bad, if it's done correctly. A lot of people like to write prose, put line breaks in, and call it free form poetry, which in my opinion would be inaccurate. In my opinion free form poetry is not poetry without form, it's poetry that creates its own rules (or "form" if you will) and follows them strictly, instead of predefined ones (such as meter).

Hope this helps