Poetry Is Pretentious

Free verse poetry emerged as a radical departure from the strict structural constraints of traditional poetic forms like sonnets and haikus. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, poets like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson began experimenting with a form that didn’t adhere to regular rhyme schemes or metrical patterns. This departure was a significant shift in the history of poetry, as it allowed poets to liberate their creativity from the confines of traditional rules. Free verse poetry can come in many shapes and stanza variations. The absence of a predetermined structure meant that poets could focus on expressing raw emotions and ideas, giving birth to a new kind of poetic freedom that resonated with the changing social and cultural landscapes of the time.

Rules of Free Verse Poetry

1. There are no rules! Go crazy.

Famous Examples of the Form

Come slowly, Eden
by Emily Dickinson

Come slowly, Eden
Lips unused to thee.
Bashful, sip thy jasmines,
As the fainting bee,
Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums,
Counts his nectars—alights,
And is lost in balms!

The Garden
by Ezra Pound

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 anemia.

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.

Personal Examples of the Form

Magic
by C.W. Bryan

It gets hard-
er to believe

in magic after
your heart shatt-

ers for the first
time. It gets

harder to see
the bigger pic-

ture through
the lattice of

a confessional
door. I have

friends who
I’ve never told

I love them. I
hope the wind

frames their
faces instead of

fizzling out. The
sun still rises

over my neighbor’s
roof even though

I don’t live
there anymore.

It gets hard-
er to believe

in magic when
all the lights are out.

Ophelia
by C.W. Bryan

You can leave out sunflower seeds
on top of that empty birdbath your
mother bought for you when you moved in.

You can name the squirrels that come
to eat them things like Ophelia or
Daphne, or any of your other heroines.

You can needle felt a little witch hat
the size of a thimble to strap on the
head of one of those gluttonous squirrels.

You can see your self reflected in the
blackened, glassy, fear-filled eyes of Ophelia,
so dark and wet you could drown in them.