Talk:Free verse

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Noah Hickman (BYU) (talk · contribs) has been paid by BYU. Their editing has included contributions to this article. COI declarations on userpage

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Can someone do something about this article? Free verse is such an important topic, but the article is in need of help, length, everything, from experts. And from people who can write. The first paragraph is a disaster! (" Many poems composed in free verse thus tend to not follow the rhythm it's suppose to therefore creating a 'free' effect." Good heavens!)

--- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.165.170.148 (talk) 06:25, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

ok, the concept belies the method in its purview of vagarious dissemination...free, you say free verse? I say free is a matter of contextual thought when the pretext of what is is not formulated. And yes, the rendition must be in manners of laudable art form, the inventiveness of imagery, for instance, conveys a certain internal mode contrary to the concept...the irony could kill an elephant.

This article is not fine. Except for the random reference to vers libre. I don't know enough about poetry to fix it, but it is certainly incomplete.

--- How about some examples? Adam Bishop (talk) 08:37, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

--- Shouldn't this page also include a discussion of the criticisms of free verse? --MattOConnor (talk) 20:17, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Citations/Examples

Yes, particularly citations for quotes, such as Robert Frost's. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Macduffman (talk • contribs) 13:31, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Where/when did Frost say this? I've always seen this dropped in as a one-liner without any context. Where did it come from, and can such a statement be representative of his entire view of free-verse if it has no context? 161.6.50.98 (talk) 18:36, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

edit by 70.234.222.255

"However, much like blank verse poetry, it has been suggested that free verse poetry be recategroized simply as another type of literary composition since, in contrast to literally ever other type of traditional poetry, it doesn't rhyme."

I've reverted this edit, much as was done with the similar edit to blank verse. We don't need sour grapes spoiling the article. But some more cogent, and sourced, criticism of free verse wouldn't be out of place.GreetingsEarthling (talk) 14:04, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Suggested Overhaul

I think it is important to remember that not everyone reading this article will want to take a scholarly approach to the subject - perhaps the introductory paragraph could be rewritten to include a basic definition of how free verse differs from rhyming verse.

Also expressions like "other traditional elements of expression, such as diction and syntax may still be prominent" are very vague. This sentence contains syntax for example and how I decide to use punctuation will determine the resulting diction.

Just as a last thought, it might be prudent to introduce a section concerning why some poets prefer the use of free verse to other forms.

Thanks Natty444 (talk) 21:04, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How is it that the article has gone from whatever was written when the above was posted to now having no introductory paragraph at all? --Shadebug (talk) 15:13, 15 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Are there then only two verse forms - "rhyming" and "free"? What happened to alliterative, metrical and many others that have been successfully used over the millennia? 212.159.59.5 (talk) 15:25, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The section "Form and Structure" offers exclusively a subjective and potentially biased view of the merits of free verse. Both argument and counter-argument are needed for the section to be objective. 212.159.59.5 (talk) 13:07, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No examples?

I think that there should be a few small examples or extracts of free verse poems demonstrating its non strict but still recognizable rhythmic and rhyme patterns which characterize free verse poems.--128.100.86.78 (talk) 15:18, 20 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Biased and subjective

"Free verse is not easy to write... much pattern and discipline is to be found in it.... the choice of exact words and the effect of associations give it its beauty." - This is the writer's opinion, and doesn't really have a place here.

Also, I do not think Jim Morrison is a reputable source. While a famous lyricist, he wasn't really known for his free verse poetry, and certainly not for his literary criticism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.15.8.153 (talk) 01:30, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Biased lede

The whole lede is completely biased. After a one sentence neutral definition, it springs straight into nothing for the rest of the intro but criticism of free verse and how it is not free and that two people think it's restrictive, without even any exploration of how free verse has been argued to actually BE 'free' and not 'restrictive' first. Or at least we should talk more about what free verse intends to achieve, when it was started to be first used, it's changes and developments over time, key authors who used it (Whitman and Lawrence, for example). EryZ (talk) 03:14, 9 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Free verse is not poetry and those who write it are not poets

It is asked on this talk page "should there not be some criticisms of free verse" so I am putting back an entry which shows free verse is not poetry and those who write it are not poets. This entry will be most likely deleted often as it breaks some people idol that free verse is poetry. So here is the entry

Critique

CritiqueA critique which shows that according to the standard definition of poetry ie in metre free verse is not poetry and those who write it ie Walt Whitman , T S Eliot etc are not poets. Thus most modernist poetry is not really poetry at all but only prose — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kullusa (talk • contribs) 03:42, 6 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

IMHO that link look suspicious. I think that if a critique to free verse should be made then a reference to a scholar article should be preferred. Tesi1700 (talk) 20:52, 24 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The article is largely free of criticism of free verse, and surely not every response to free verse over the years has been been positive. There are and have been those who agree that free verse is not really poetry or even "verse," and the article could really use a section that reflects that. I, for one, would like to know what exactly is the difference between free verse and a speech? Count Robert of Paris (talk) 17:56, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Merger proposal

Formal request has been received to merge Vers libre into Free verse; dated: November 2017. Proposer's Rationale: Two different terms for the same thing, and both articles have very overlapping contents. Discuss here. Richard3120 (talk) 19:24, 30 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the articles overlap enough that they would benefit from a merge. Numerous specialist sources treat the terms synonymously.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5] The Britannica gives them separate articles, one for the movement in French poetry and the other for the corresponding one in English. Another source also divides them by language,^[6] and though this is occasionally implied by others, it by no means seems a hard-and-fast rule in current use. I found one other source^[7] which distinguishes the two, but seemingly based on older characteristics which are not universal to vers libre in French, and considers it a kind of free verse anyway. As for the direction of merge, vers libre narrowly wins out in general Google results (365,000,000 vs 319,000,000) but loses in Google books (615,000 vs 5,460,000) and ngrams. ─ ReconditeRodent « talk · contribs » 21:22, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hey all - I disagree that these articles should have been merged. "Free verse" refers broadly to a category of form in English verse, but vers libre, in France, refers both to the form itself and a discrete literary movement within French Modernism, more specifically within French symbolism. Vers libre was a specific experiment undertaken by poets like Stéphane Mallarmé, Charles Baudelaire, and Arthur Rimbaud and constitutes its own school of thought. No such corollary exists in English-language poetry. I don't think there's anything wrong with maintaining a "vers libre" section on the page given that English-language free verse does evolve directly from the vers libre movement, but vers libre should retain its own page as a distinct movement in French poetry. If there are no objections, I plan to restore the former page. Noah Hickman (BYU) (talk) 19:31, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Poetry Foundation Glossary – vers libre
^ Russell E. Murphy (2007). Critical Companion to T. S. Eliot: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. Infobase Publishing. p. 566. ISBN 978-1-4381-0855-1.
^ Alan Holder (1995). Rethinking Meter: A New Approach to the Verse Line. Bucknell University Press. p. 104. ISBN 978-0-8387-5292-0.
^ Sunil Kumar Sarker (2000). T.S. Eliot: Poetry, Plays and Prose. Atlantic Publishers & Dist. p. 49. ISBN 978-81-7156-562-7.
^ Malcolm Peet; David Robinson (November 2014). Leading Questions. Nelson Thornes. p. 161. ISBN 978-0-17-432337-2.
^ Taupin, Rene. The Influence of French Symbolism on Modern American Poetry (1986), (translated by William Pratt), Ams Studies in Modern Literature, ISBN 0-404-61579-1
^ H. T. Kirby-Smith (1998). The Origins of Free Verse. University of Michigan Press. p. 44. ISBN 0-472-08565-4. Next come the French terms for which free verse is now an incorrect translation: vers libre, vers libres, or vers libérés. Originally vers libres intended a loosening up of poetic structure into lines of irregular length (and was even applied to the flexible rhyme schemes of La Fontaine). Vers libres at first retained a certain regularity of syllabification and use of rhyming endings. A corresponding form of free verse is so common and characteristic in English that vers-libristic seems a good term to designate it. It appeared in English for the first time about 1590 when it was part of a spontaneous loosening of forms and in part a supposed borrowing from the Italian madrigal. It reappeared as the "Pindarique" in the seventeenth century, and again in the nineteenth century, following in some cases models in Italian and French poetry. The best example of this kind of free verse [e.m.] in English is "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." In its turn, "Prufrock" has become a model; Adrienne Rich's "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" uses devices that filter down from the French through Eliot, and in addition imitates Eliot's loading of every rift with literary quotation. Malof identified this as "fragmented free verse," which works quite well as a description, but which does not recognize the importantce of the French models for twentieth-century verse of this type. Since numerous examples exist from earlier times, however, Malof's term is a reasonable alternative to vers-libristic.

Disclosed COI

Hi! My name is Noah, and I work for the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU. I'll be working on this page. Please feel free to reach out with any questions, comments, or concerns regarding any of the changes I make, and feel free to review my user page for questions regarding my background and my COIs. Noah Hickman (BYU) (talk) 22:21, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Citation Needed

"Free verse does not 'proceed by a strict set of rules … is not a literary type, and does not conform to a formal structure.'" Do we have a citation for this? I'm not a fan of the "citation needed" tag, so I thought I'd ask the talk-page before sullying the article with that ugly marker. Noah Hickman (BYU) (talk) 20:31, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Poetry Foundation Glossary – vers libre

[Murphy2007-2] Russell E. Murphy (2007). Critical Companion to T. S. Eliot: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. Infobase Publishing. p. 566. ISBN 978-1-4381-0855-1.

[Holder1995-3] Alan Holder (1995). Rethinking Meter: A New Approach to the Verse Line. Bucknell University Press. p. 104. ISBN 978-0-8387-5292-0.

[Sarker2000-4] Sunil Kumar Sarker (2000). T.S. Eliot: Poetry, Plays and Prose. Atlantic Publishers & Dist. p. 49. ISBN 978-81-7156-562-7.

[PeetRobinson2014-5] Malcolm Peet; David Robinson (November 2014). Leading Questions. Nelson Thornes. p. 161. ISBN 978-0-17-432337-2.

[6] Taupin, Rene. The Influence of French Symbolism on Modern American Poetry (1986), (translated by William Pratt), Ams Studies in Modern Literature, ISBN 0-404-61579-1

[Kirby-Smith1998-7] H. T. Kirby-Smith (1998). The Origins of Free Verse. University of Michigan Press. p. 44. ISBN 0-472-08565-4. Next come the French terms for which free verse is now an incorrect translation: vers libre, vers libres, or vers libérés. Originally vers libres intended a loosening up of poetic structure into lines of irregular length (and was even applied to the flexible rhyme schemes of La Fontaine). Vers libres at first retained a certain regularity of syllabification and use of rhyming endings. A corresponding form of free verse is so common and characteristic in English that vers-libristic seems a good term to designate it. It appeared in English for the first time about 1590 when it was part of a spontaneous loosening of forms and in part a supposed borrowing from the Italian madrigal. It reappeared as the "Pindarique" in the seventeenth century, and again in the nineteenth century, following in some cases models in Italian and French poetry. The best example of this kind of free verse [e.m.] in English is "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." In its turn, "Prufrock" has become a model; Adrienne Rich's "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" uses devices that filter down from the French through Eliot, and in addition imitates Eliot's loading of every rift with literary quotation. Malof identified this as "fragmented free verse," which works quite well as a description, but which does not recognize the importantce of the French models for twentieth-century verse of this type. Since numerous examples exist from earlier times, however, Malof's term is a reasonable alternative to vers-libristic.

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