Free Verse: verse without metre. Although it has precursors in English (e.g. in the poetry of Walt Whitman), free verse began to be widely used in the early twentieth century, as part of the general rejection by modernism of established artistic conventions: “the first heave”, as Ezra Pound observed in the
Cantos, “was to break the pentameter”. Free verse in English comes in three major varieties, two of which (vers libre and the versicle) attempt to replace metre with other (partial) systems of rhythmical organisation. The most common kind, however, is a form of segmented prose. While free verse enjoys all the complex and various rhythmical possibilities of prose, the line-ending functions additionally as a marker of breaks and pauses of various kinds. In the following lines, for…
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Citation: Groves, Peter Lewis. "Free Verse". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 June 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=445, accessed 24 November 2024.]
