Poetics

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Poetics

Jeanette Oestermyer

How Free is Free Verse? Should it be Called Open Form?

Is free verse really free? One definition of free verse is 'unmetrical verse; lines that are not measured or counted for number of accents, or number of syllables; lines that are free of meter; also called vers Libre.' However, some poets do not agree with that theory. T.S. Eliot said it best, "No vers is libre for the man who wants to do a good job."

If one wants to write a good poem, the verse is not going to be truly free. It has to be poetic through the use of various poetic devices. It is not simply prose written in short lines, but there has to be a rhythm that is felt when read aloud. That rhythm can be found in alliteration, metaphor, simile, consonance, assonance and imagery.

Enjambment, or what was once called "run-on free verse," is another way to create the feel, or sound of rhythm. In using enjambment, be cautious of where you break a line. It can be a place where one would catch a breath, or place a comma if writing prose. It has been said that enjambment tends to quicken the reading of a poem if it is used frequently throughout. Among the early poets who explored and enhanced the idea of run-on free verse were William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore and Ezra Pound.

End-stopped free verse, generally has longer lines because the lines are not broken until a complete thought is written. There can also be short lines, so line lengths may vary in this type of free verse.

Walt Whitman has been called the father of end-stopped free verse, that is if one discounts some books of the Bible, including Psalms, Ecclesiastes and parts of Job. Some poets also use the same words at the beginning of several lines. This works well if done with discretion.

In Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," an elegy for Abraham Lincoln, the poet kept all lines about the same length. He also repeated the same words at almost every line's beginning, as below:

- Coffin that passes through lanes and streets, -- Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land, -- With the pomp of the inloop'd flags with the cities draped in black, -- With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil'd women standing, -- With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,

So, is what we know today as free verse really vers libre? Perhaps it would better be called "open form." In X. J. Kennedy's book, An Introduction To Poetry, he states:

"Poetry in open form used to be called free verse liberated from the shackles of rime and meter. Writing in this form, a poet seeks to discover a fresh and individual arrangement for words in every poem."

The last sentence is my favorite: "If one can derive a fresh arrangement of words, one that is unique to the individual poet -- it may not be free, but it can be open to experimentation by every poet in each poem written."

Free verse, or open form, can have an occasional natural rhyme, or a rhyme that simply happens. It can also be rhymed throughout, but this is difficult without discovering a rhyme that is forced, or that appears to be forced somewhere in the poem. Whitman used repetitions such as every line ending on an 'ing' word; i.e., walking, spooning, going, which provided a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. Internal rhyme was also used in many of his poems. Other poets use rhyme at the end of their free verse poem as a reflection of another word earlier in the last stanza.

In open form poetry, sound and rhythm are practical forces. In reading an open-form poem aloud, it is best to pause at the end of each line only briefly, but do not let your voice drop. Because open-form poems lack meter, they are enhanced by recurring pauses at the ends of all lines.

Call it what you choose: free verse or open form, but the careful choice of words is also extremely important. A good thesaurus is an invaluable tool for the poet no matter if writing free verse or rhymed and metered verse. The rhythm in free verse is found through a myriad of devices, most included above. A note of caution: do not over-use any one poetic device in a single poem, as it loses its effectiveness if overdone.