[stylist] free verse poems

[Bridgit Pollpeter]

Free verse is not prose. It is a poetry form that, yes, has it's own
rules, though as Myrna states, it's definition can vary a bit. Prose is
writing like fiction, essays, memoirs and all the encompassing formats
like novel, short story and novella. A poetic voice and/or structure can
be applied to prose writing, which is often called poetic prose or
lyrical prose, but it's still classified as prose. A free verse poem
still looks and feels like a poem, whereas poetic prose looks and feels
like prose with that added element of a poetic voice.

The following definition of free verse poetry comes from the Dictionary
of Poetic Terms:

free verse (loan translation of French vers libre) unmetered and often
irregularly lined-out unrhymed verse that depends upon extensive
variation in rhythm, balanced phrasing, syntactical repetition, and
typographical and grammatical oddness to achieve its effects. Pacing or
cadence, a unit of measure that is larger than the metrical foot, is
used. As a form, its strength lies in the variation and subtlety of
effects which it can achieve in contrast to the more limited
possibilities of regularly metered, rhymed, and structured verse. While
the line or stanza acts as a basic unit or measurement in f.v., these
guides may depend upon a number of more specific, formative units of
pacing, such as (1) the syntactical unit, which measures a line
according to units of grammar, as in these lines of Galway Kinnell:
We walk across the snow, The stars can be faint, free verse 148
The moon can be eating itself out,
There can be meteors flaring to death on earth,
The Northern Lights can be blooming and seething
And tearing themselves apart all night,
We walk arm in arm, and we are happy.
(2) Mind Breath (The term invented by Allen Ginsberg for a very long
line that is measured by how many words in a line one's mind could
comfortably hold. His book-length poems Howl and Kaddish exemplify the
type.):
I was driven mad seeing how minute and specious the worst minds of the
academy upset by the publish-or-perish dictum drove them into publishing
jibberish
(3) the sense or thought unit, which builds lines by parceling out
discrete ideas, images, or other sensual perceptions, as in these lines
by Louise Gliick:
One sound. Then the hiss and whir of houses gliding into their places.
And the wind
leafs through the bodies of animals.
(4) the conversational unit, which creates phrases and line lengths
according to commonly spoken language, as in these lines by Ira Sadoff:
I miss the peace and quiet of Chicago that's the kind of guy I am
and (5) the rhetorical unit, which molds lines according to the emphasis
in meaning and semantics that the poet intends, as in these lines by
Philip Dacey:
Thirty candles and one to grow on. My husband and son watch me think of
wishes.
Any one of these formal rhythmical elements has the potential either
singly or in combination to dominate and form the rhythm and lineation
of a poem.
F.v., an invention of the 19th-century French poets whose system of
quantitative verse adapted itself naturally to the new form, has
revolutionized the English accentual-syllabic verse by loosening the
somewhat mechanical restrictions inherent in stress prosody. In
intention and effect, f.v. has claimed a middle ground between prose and
metered verse which has brought poetry closer to the spoken idiom of
various languages. Central to its use in American poetry is William
Carlos Williams'theory and use of the variable foot in which the
customary metrical units of measurement are expanded to include more
unaccented syllables, words, and phrases, so that the line or stanza,
the new unit of measurement, is dependent upon a sense of pacing, of
counterpoint and rhythmical improvisation, rather than metrical feet. In
general, f.v. creates an air of familiarity, accessibility, and
naturalness. In terms of language models that f.v. reflects, it is based
on (1) ver.se written toward the style of prose, as in Philip Levine's
Fixing the Foot: On Rhythm:
149 Fugitives
Yesterday I heard a Dutch doctor talking to a small girl who had cut her
foot, not seriously, and was very frightened by the sight of her own
blood. "Nay! Nay!" he said over and over. I could hear him quite
distinctly through the wall that separated us, and his voice was strong
and calm, he spoke very slowly and seemed never to stop speaking ...
(2) verse structured on semiformal speech rhythms, as in Philip Larkin's
Poetry of Departures:
Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand, as epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.
or (3) verse written toward the style of the common idiom or low
diction, as in Charles Bukowski's no charge:
this babe in the grandstand with dyed red hair kept leaning her breasts
against me and talking about Gardena poker parlors
The King James version of the Bible has been very influential in
revealing the possibilities in nonmetrical verse. Walt Whitman imitated
its use of catalogue verse, and its Psalms and Song of Solomon acted as
ancient models for new forms. Long before the new form became
conventional, poets such as Milton and Blake were using metrical verse
that resembles f.v.
See balance, experimental poetry, imagism, line ending, line, mnemonic
device, open field composition, organic composition, pace, parallelism,
phrasing, polyrhythmic, prose poem, punctuation, repetition, running
rhythm, sprung rhythm, and triadic stanza. See also rhythm in Appenddc
1.
French forms a set of regularly rhyming and metrically patterned verse
forms that originated in Southern France during the 12th and 13th
centuries when the troubadours were extant. Some of the forms include
ballade, bref double, chant royal, kyrielle, lai, lai nouveau, limerick,
rime couee, rondeau, rondel, rondelet, sestina, terzanelle, triolet,
vjllanelle, and virelay. For a related term, see fixed forms.
Fugitives a group of well-known poets from Vanderbilt University who
celebrated the mores and values of the South and espoused the power of
the specific, concrete image. Among its adherents were Allen Tate,
Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, and Donald Davidson who edited
and wrote for the short-lived literary magazine The Fugitive during
1922-25. Tate, the school's most vociferous spokesman, linked economics
and social behavior to poetry, and spoke against antirural values of the
North. The Fugitives' ideas are best put forth in a collection of their
essays on poetry, history, and socioeconomics entitled I'll Take My
Stand, the South and the Agrarian Tradition by Twelve Southerners. See
movements and
full rhyme 150
schools of poetry in Appendix 1. See also new criticism, a movement
often associated with the F.
full rhyme: See perfect rhyme.
functional metaphor (also called "organic metaphor" or "structural
metaphor") a metaphor whose tenor is implicitly carried within its
vehicle (see tenor and vehicle) and thus acts symbolically. 
The form is common in Shakespeare's work, as in the following lines in
which the soul is depicted as a king surrounded by rebelling forces of
the body: "Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, / Thrall to these
rebel pow'rs that thee array." In Metaphysical Poetry, the f.m. is
referred to as conceit. See metaphor.
fundamental image: See controlling image; see also functional metaphor.
Futurism a movement in art and poetry of early 20th-century
international postsymbolists in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and
Spain who called for an unwavering commitment to action in art and life,
even if that action means destruction of the past and leads to anarchy
and war. The Futurists disavowed everything associated with the past in
order to concentrate on experiments with the unknown. Their call, like
that of the Cubists (see cubism), was meant to invent a new means of
expression, at times without literal meaning, which would release its
followers from the bonds of tradition in a new world. The Russian poet
Anton Lotov pushed language toward its aural limit when he composed his
Melody of an Easter City, which, through the medium of sound alone,
tried to recreate the brash atmosphere of a Russian Bazaar. It
represented a type of poetry like Lewis Carrol's Jabberwocky which is
known as nonsense verse, but which the Russian Futurists termed
trans-sense verse, as in the following:
Khan khan da dash Shu shur I des Vilar' yagda Suksan Kaedeksh Mak sa Mak
sa Yakim den zar Vaks bar dan yak
Zaza Siu sech bazd I Gar yo zda be Men Khatt zayde Vin da chok me.
Mayakovsky in Russia, Filippo Marinetti in Italy (who wrote the first
Futurist Manifesto in 1909), and Guillaume Apollinaire in France all
tried to revolutionize the poem through this short-lived movement.
Apollinaire in his own manifesto called for "exaltation of aggressive
movement, feverish insomnia, gymnastic pace, perilous jump,
etc.-glorification of war- the only hygiene of the world-militarism,
patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchist, and scorn of
woman." F. created a hysteria meant to break the calm and innocent
surface of the prewar Georgian state of mind. It was, in fact, an
artistic gesture that foreshadowed the spectre of World War I. See beast
language, cubism, dada, expressionism, imagism, surrealism, and
vorticism.