Free Verse

Free Verse: Poetry that is based on the irregular rhythmic cadence or the recurrence, with variations, of phrases, images, and syntactical patterns rather than the conventional use of meter. Rhyme may or may not be present in free verse, but when it is, it is used with great freedom. In conventional verse the unit is the foot, or the line; in free verse the units are larger, sometimes being paragraphs or strophes.

The poetry of the Bible, particularly in the King James Version, which attempts to approximate the Hebrew cadences, rests on cadence and parallelism. The Psalms and The Song of Solomon are noted examples of free verse. Milton sometimes substituted rhythmically constructed verse paragraphs for metrically regular lines, notably in the choruses of Samson Agonistes, as this example shows:

But patience is more oft the exercise
Of Saints, the trial of thir fortitude,
Making them each his own Deliver,
And Victor over all
That tyranny or fortune can inflict.

Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was a major experiment in cadenced rather than metrical versification. The following lines are typical:

All truths wait in all things
They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon.


				*SONG OF MYSELF by Walt Whitman* *Free Verse*



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		*Walt Whitman was famously known for his Free Verse style of writing, which he made famous in Leaves of Grass,* published in 1855.**



		Free Verse: Poetry that is based on the irregular rhythmic cadence or the recurrence, with variations, of phrases, images, and syntactical patterns rather than the conventional use of meter. Rhyme may or may not be present in free verse, but when it is, it is used with great freedom. In conventional verse the unit is the foot, or the line; in free verse the units are larger, sometimes being paragraphs or strophes. The poetry of the Bible, particularly in the King James Version, which attempts to approximate the Hebrew cadences, rests on cadence and parallelism. The Psalms and The Song of Solomon are noted examples of free verse. Milton sometimes substituted rhythmically constructed verse paragraphs for metrically regular lines, notably in the choruses of Samson Agonistes, as this example shows: But patience is more oft the exercise Of Saints, the trial of thir fortitude, Making them each his own Deliver, And Victor over all That tyranny or fortune can inflict. Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was a major experiment in cadenced rather than metrical versification. The following lines are typical: All truths wait in all things They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it, They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon.



		This Information was obtained from: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Ithaca/3462/dactyl.htm