Thank you for this response. Yes I suppose 'free' verse written by a poet with a 'good ear' can be perfectly good; it's more the stuff that makes silly use of enjambement which gets my goat. For example much of the Poems on the Undergound series, e.g.
walk the spiral
up out of the pavement
into your own reflection, into
transparency, into the space
where flat planes are curves
and you are transposed
as you go higher into a thought
of flying, joining the game
of brilliance and scattering
where fragments of poems
words, names fall like glory
into the lightwells until
St Mary's Axe is brimming
Gherkin Music by Jo Shapcott
I actually quite like this. The enjambment is a nice bit of visual poetry so that the poem spirals in the same way as the Gherkin does. If I have one criticism it's the the self-consciousness of the line "fragments of poems" in a poem, but otherwise it's not that bad for what it is.
Anyway the best contemporary poetry I find in music too, especially hip hop and grime. I was sent this today with people laughing over it and expressing admiration for these crisp bars:
https://twitter.com/OwodunniShubby/status/1383578499269599241"Got a thingamajig out I'm rejigging it quickly and I'm running all sorts of attachments
Big scope with a thermal sight and I'm up on a rooftop prone on a mattress"
is delicious poetry: not only rhythm, but wordplay, humour, imagery, rhyme both end and internal etc. suffused with energy in a direct manner.
Of course songwriters and the like in music have it much easier that it can all be put out and recited to a catchy beat. But that is what poetry for the written page should aspire to emulate in its own way because without this element poetry's appeal will never be popular.
