#STROPHES IN POETRY FREE#

#STROPHES IN POETRY FREE#

I think it’s important to state that both free and structured poems can happily sit side by side, or that form can influence free verse there doesn’t have to be conflict between the two. In recent times, the form has enjoyed popularity with novices who have derided stricter forms. It is obviously the easiest and least daunting form for a poet to start with. Robert Frosts once stated that writing Free Verse was akin to “playing tennis without a net.” Useįree Verse poetry is by far the most common form in the modern era of poetry.

However, though we say Free Verse is free from rules, many poets throughout history have critiqued the form and claimed that while there are no formal rules, there are indeed rules present, while others have insisted that rules are necessary to write accomplished poetry. Free Verse often utilises ‘natural rhythm’-the intonation and cadence of regular speech. By removing the prescription of rhymes, the poet is free to innovate or borrow from other forms throughout varying sections, making a piece unique. The Free Verse poem is perhaps more suited for the ear than the eye, and it has enjoyed continuous popularity in the hands of performance poets. Walt Whitman used the Free Verse form, before it’s codification, though he would innovate using refrains, creating rules for their usage within the poem. Within early Free Verse poems, the Strophe formed a thematic circle images from the beginning would be resolved in the closing lines. A Strophe is a stanza of varying line lengths. The Free Verse poem is built not on line length or number of lines in a stanza, but instead focuses on the Strophe-a concept borrowed from the Greek Ode. It was decided that Free Verse was not strictly free of rules but rather it was a form where each poem could adopt its own rhythmic structures. In 1912, Robert de Souza published an essay summing up the evolution of Free Verse as it had stood over the preceding twenty years. Free Verse attempted to remove these rules in order to liberate the poet to discuss broader subjects and to use language and rhythm in a new way. Before this, poetry was heavily based in form and rules, and it required extensive study to become a successful poet. The movement has been described as the moment that the French poem became conscious of itself as art. However, what we know as Free Verse mostly originates from Vers Libre, a French Counter-Romanticist movement of the late 19th Century, led by luminaries such as Baudelaire and Rimbaud.

Early examples can be found in Dryden’s Threnodia Augustalis, or House of Flame by Chaucer, or even the Biblical Psalms. It may be fair to say that as long as there has been poetry, there has been Free Verse. Free Verse, also known as Blank Verse, is a form of poetry that is defined by its lack of form.

Strophes in poetry