Today most poets write “free verse”—lined poems that don’t use traditional forms like the sonnet’s 14 iambic pentameter lines. Traditional forms dictate where lines must end. By contrast, free verse offers no firm rules poets can rely on. But lack of rules doesn’t mean a lack of guiding principles.
These principles become clearer once we understand the two key functions of poetic lines: shaping music and shaping meaning.
Free Verse Isn’t Free
We could say there no such thing as free verse because all good poetry is patterned, its language condensed, its rhythms more musical than those of everyday speech. But the term we use doesn’t matter. What matters is to understand the effects lines have on readers.
Readers experience a line ending in two ways. First as a kind of musical notation: mentally (and physically, if they're reading aloud), they linger for a beat at the end of a line and place extra emphasis on the first accented word on the next line.
Secondly, readers experience a line ending as a kind of punctuation—a subtle conditioning of the “prose sense” behind the poem’s verse; no matter how fragmented the prose sense may be (as in John Ashbery’s “Leaving Atocha Station”[1]), we can grasp the broad drift of it with a little effort.
In free verse, line endings are chosen for the following reasons—usually for more than one, because every line ending involves an interplay between music and meaning:
(1) To make the poem more interesting musically
(2) To emphasize important words by placing them at the ends or beginnings of lines
(3) To align the verse with the natural flow of the prose sense
(4) To emphasize shifts in syntax and create intentional ambiguity or disruption of the ordinary prose sense
(5) To clarify words or phrases that risk confusion because the language has been condensed to carry multiple meanings
Line Endings in Action
Consider James Wright's famous poem, "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota."[2] Here it is in paragraph form to highlight the prose sense:
"Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly, asleep on the black trunk, blowing like a leaf in green shadow. Down the ravine behind the empty house, the cowbells follow one another into the distances of the afternoon. To my right, in a field of sunlight between two pines, the droppings of last year’s horses blaze up into golden stones. I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on. A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home. I have wasted my life."
The last sentence suggests some internal disturbance in the speaker. Wright could have emphasized that mood by ending his lines in a ways that disturb the reader’s expectations of the prose sense:
Over my head, I see the
bronze butterfly, asleep on
the black trunk, blowing
like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty
house, the cowbells follow one
another into the distances of the
afternoon. To my right, in
a field of sunlight between two
pines, the droppings of
last year’s horses blaze up into
golden stones. I lean back, as
the evening darkens and
comes on. A chicken hawk floats
over, looking for home. I
have wasted my life.
Of course, Wright chose not to undercut the reader's expectations. Instead, he created line endings that reinforce the prose sense:
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
By aligning his verse with the prose sense, Wright makes the last line even more startling. The speaker’s angst suddenly stands revealed instead of emerging from an established sense of disturbance.
In the end, free verse can demand more from both the poet and the reader than traditional verse. Free verse can’t satisfy by fulfilling a pre-established form; it can satisfy only by reinforcing or undercutting prose sense in effective ways. Free verse forces poets and readers to embrace a radically open language and invent—line by line, poem by poem—music and meanings that no traditional form could register.
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[1] From John Ashbery: Collected Poems, 1956-1987 (2008). Library of America.
[2] From Above the River: The Complete Poems and Selected Prose (1992). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Joseph Hutchison - Joseph Hutchison has worked for many years as a professional writer, both inside corporations and—since 1992—as the co-owner ...
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