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- Poetry: Recognising poetic form
- Historical aspects
- Stylistic aspects
Free verse
Definition
Free verse is a form of poetry which does not follow the traditional constraints of metre, rhythm or rhyme-scheme and allows the natural structure of the spoken word to shape the poem. However writers of free verse may well utilise poetic devices such as rhythm, metaphor and alliteration to allow them to create tone and structure.
Origins
Modernist literary critics argue that it was Ezra Pound who first intentionally broke away from the traditional iambic pentameter of blank verse. T.S. Eliot is also credited with creating modern free verse.
Example
- The Garden by Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
of a sort of emotional anaemia.
And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.
In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.
- William Carlos Williams(1883-1963) poem The Red Wheelbarrow is another famous example of free verse:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
It is evident that neither of these examples follows a strict format in terms of structure and rhyme. Instead they rely on the natural rhythms of speech, associative language and their visual form for poetic effect. Free verse is often seen to create a sense of simplicity which focuses the reader’s attention on the subject matter of the poem.
The particular measurement in a line of poetry, determined by the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables (in some languages, the pattern of long and short syllables). It is the measured basis of rhythm.
The musical effect of the repetition of stresses or beats, and the speed or tempo at which these may be read.
The ordered or regular patterns of rhyme at the ends of lines or verses of poetry.
The musical effect of the repetition of stresses or beats, and the speed or tempo at which these may be read.
An image or form of comparison where one thing is said actually to be another - e.g. 'fleecy clouds'.
Alliteration is a device frequently used in poetry or rhetoric (speech-making) whereby words starting with the same consonant are used in close proximity- e.g. 'fast in fires', 'stars, start'.
The tone of voice in which anything is to be read in: e.g. lyrical, dramatic, contemplative.
A follower or adherent of the modernism movement of the first half of the twentieth century, which rejected traditional modes and certainties.
American Imagist poet, 1885 – 1972, based in London in the early twentieth century.
A line containing five metrical feet each consisting of one stressed and one unstressed syllable.
Unrhymed verse, in lines of ten syllables with an underlying stressed / unstressed rhythm.
The shape / organising principle of a piece of writing, particularly applied to poetry.
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