Poetry for Life®

What is Free Verse Poetry?

By Elle Kammerer

4 minute read

"Poetry is supposed to rhyme!" - That English teacher you didn't like in school.

Every poetry reader has heard it before: poetry is all about rhyme patterns and beat, syllables, and forms. It has a certain look, a certain feel to it. Poetry has been written in verse for centuries! It isn’t written in long sentences that read like paragraphs and sound like speech. It isn’t a stream of consciousness. Poetry has always been the same.

Except we all know that isn’t true.

Free verse poetry disregards rhyme schemes and patterns. It breaks the traditional conventions of classic poetry. It creates its own form with intention, allowing the poet to express themselves without constraint. Because of this, free verse poetry is often some of the most creative pieces you’ll read.

So, let’s look at what makes free verse poetry so unique. Why is it special? What brought it about? Most importantly, can free verse rhyme?

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

Robert Frost

What is Free Verse Poetry?

In its most basic terms, free verse is poetry that doesn’t follow a strict meter or rhyme scheme. It doesn’t follow iambic pentameter like a classic Dickinson poem. Nor does it have an abab cdcd efef gg rhyme pattern like a Shakespearean sonnet. It also doesn’t require a precise number of syllables per line, like a Matsuo Bashō haiku.

Instead, free verse poetry is made up of lines that follow the natural rhythms of speech. The poet creates the structure as they go, letting the emotion determine the shape of the poem, unfiltered and alive. This free form of writing allows for lines to be any length, verses to be broken in unlimited ways, and for entire poems to be as short as a single word or as long as a book (looking at you, Allen Ginsberg).

It is not just shameful for a contemporary American poet to use rhymes, it is unthinkable.

Joseph Brodsky

Who Started Free Verse Poetry?

If you are looking for someone to blame or thank for breaking the poetry mould and throwing away the rules, Walt Whitman is generally considered the father of American free verse.

While the concept of free verse poetry wasn’t invented by Whitman, it was his collection Leaves of Grass that started the movement. That groundbreaking collection allowed poetry to breathe in a way it hadn’t in the past. This new style removed the traditional and restrictive barriers of poetic form, opening up poetry to more writers and readers than ever before.

Whitman inspired others to take up the form later, such as William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot, and Pablo Neruda. Today, most poetry is written in free verse. Next time you open a collection by Rupi Kaur, Nikita Gil, or Ocean Vuong, think about how the form and freedom of the poem affects the meaning or your experience with it.