It is not just shameful for a contemporary American poet to use rhymes, it is unthinkable. It seems banal to him; he fears banality worse than anything, and therefore, he uses free verse - though free verse is no guarantee against banality.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a poet's struggle with the constraints of tradition versus the fear of being unoriginal.
In this quote, Joseph Brodsky critiques contemporary American poetry, suggesting that poets often reject traditional rhyming schemes in favor of free verse due to a fear of being perceived as banal or unoriginal. This implies that the aversion to rhyme has become so strong that poets believe using it is shameful, yet they still risk producing work that may lack originality despite their chosen form.
In practice
An introduction to a poetry reading where this quote can be used to discuss the evolution of poetic forms.
Basically, it's hard for me to assess myself, a hardship not only prompted by the immodesty of the enterprise, but because one is not capable of assessing himself, let alone his work. However, if I were to summarize, my main interest is the nature of time. That's what interests me most of all. What time can do to a man.
One always pulls the trigger out of self-interest and quotes history to avoid responsibility or pangs of conscience.
On the whole, infinity is a fairly palpable aspect of this business of publishing, if only because it extends a dead author's existence beyond the limits he envisioned, or provides a living author with a future he cannot measure. In other words, this business deals with the future which we all prefer to regard as unending.
The invention of ethical and political doctrines, which blossomed into our own social sciences, is a product of times when things appeared manageable. The same goes for the criticism of those doctrines, though as a voice from the past, this criticism proved prophetic.
Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those - in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed.
To put it in plain language, Russia is that country where the name of a writer appears not on the cover of his book, but on the door of his prison cell.
Work is what you do for others, liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.
I bet you never heard of a playa with no game, Told the truth to get what I want, but shot it with no shame. Take this music dead serious while others entertain. I see they makin' they paper so I guess I can't complain...or can I? I feel they disrespectin' the whole thang. Them hooks like sellin' dope to black folks, And I choke when the food they serve ain't tastin' right, My stomach can't digest it even when I bless it.
Dance is bigger than the physical body. When you extend your arm, it doesn't stop at the end of your fingers, because you're dancing bigger than that; you're dancing spirit.
Because you have things like 'American Idol' and you've got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it's easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock.
For me, filmmaking combines everything. That's the reason I've made cinema my life's work. In films, painting and literature, theatre and music come together. But a film is still a film.
Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. ... I have 10 or so, and thats a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.
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