THE SEVEN FORMS OF FREE VERSE
By Nirmaldasan
-- This paper was published in the Proceedings of the 3rd National Conference On English To Excel, organised by the Department of English and Foreign Languages, SRM University, 13 and 14 March 2008. --
Free verse may be defined in two
ways. Negatively, it is verse that violates the laws of the oral tradition.
Positively, it is verse that fulfils the laws of the visual tradition. Both
these definitions are necessary for a comprehensive classification of free
verse.
G.S. Fraser, going by the negative
definition, identifies two kinds of free verse. “Pound and Eliot are the two
greatest masters of one kind of free verse, Lawrence and Whitman of another,”
he says in ‘Metre, Rhyme And Free Verse’ (1970, 77).
Travelling along similar lines,
Philip Hobsbaum identifies three distinct varieties:
1. Free blank verse, 2. Cadensed
verse and 3. Free verse proper. In ‘Metre, Rhythm And Verse Form’, he asserts that chopped-up prose is not
verse of any sort (1996, 89-92).
John Hollander, in ‘Rhyme’s Reason’,
creates nine defining examples of modern free verse (1981, 26-30). Here again,
the classification is based only on the oral tradition. He also does not name
the different kinds except the last which he calls ‘a unique kind of rhymed
free verse, but of a sort that really can be considered as antiverse’.
I myself in ‘Metre And Free Verse’, attempted a classification of free verse
under three types: 1. Prose-poem, 2. Semi-metre and 3. Typographic lines
(Tinai2, 27-33). But for a comprehensive classification of free verse, as
stated earlier, the visual tradition should not be ignored. If this is
accepted, then free verse may now be considered under seven forms: 1. Rhymed
free verse, 2. Blank free verse, 3. Prose-poem, 4. Found-poem, 5. Type verse,
6. Animated verse and 7. Hybrid verse. We will define
each of them and look at some examples.
1. Rhymed free verse
Rhymed verse in irregular metre is
called rhymed free verse. Here follows John Hollander’s creative example:
Because light verse makes meter
sound easy,
And because saying something just
for the rhyme is inept
and, well, cheesy,
Even when you spice up rhyme
With jokes about sagely beating
thyme
(Although that line is more
compelling
As a joke about English spelling)
A famous comic writer whose name
follows developed
a deliberate and highly skilled method of writing lines that
didn’t even try to scan so that the general effect was of
a metrical hash:
The clerihew, a poetic form invented
by Edmund Clerihew Bentley, comprises two unequal couplets. This form may also
be classified under rhymed free verse. Here is an example from him titled ‘Lord
Clive’:
What I like
about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive.
There is a great deal to be said
For being dead.
Rhymed free verse is mostly used for
humour. But it can also be used for serious verse.
2. Blank free verse
Blank verse, we know, is not free of
metre but of rhyme. But if its metre is irregular, then it may be called blank
free verse. Sri Aurobindo’s ‘Tiger And
The Deer’ is a fine example. In a footnote, the poet says that the poem
is ‘free quantitative verse, left to find its own line by line rhythm and
unity’ (Collected Poems, 1989, 569). Here are the concluding lines:
But a day may yet come when the
tiger crouches and leaps no more in the
dangerous heart of the forest,
As the mammoth shakes no more the
plains of
Still then shall the beautiful wild
deer drink from the coolness of great pools
in the leaves’ shadow.
The mighty perish in their might;
The slain survive the slayer.
Walt Whitman and D.H. Lawrence are
exponents of this form — a deviant form of the oral tradition.
3. Prose-poem
What is said may not be important in
certain poems; the way a thing is expressed is what matters in rhymes such as
‘Thirty days hath September…’ But in the prose-poem, what is said is all that
matters.
Verse is written in lines; prose, in
sentences. But free verse need not be written in lines; it can also be written
in sentences, the emphasis being on poetic content and not poetic form. This
form of free verse may be called the prose-poem. Here is Andrew Veda’s
‘Buddha’:
One day Buddha was praying for a
long time. A tiger came and roared! And saw Buddha. The tiger thought he was a
plant. And went away. A lion came and roared! And saw
Buddha. The lion also thought he was a plant. And went away.
The Buddha was still praying …
Though this form is deceptively
simple, it has its difficulties. In rhymed verse, even if the content is
shallow, the rhyme will save the verse. The prose-poem is extremely dependent
on its content. This is not to say that the rhythm can be completely ignored.
Prose also has its rhythm, which must make its presence felt in a good
prose-poem.
4. Found-poem
Identify a prose-poem. Then chop up
the sentences into arbitrary lines. You get a found-poem. So there is not much
of a difference between the prose-poem and the found-poem. The prose-poem is
unpretentious and lays emphasis on content. The found-poem also has the same
content, but its form makes it an inferior kind of visual poetry.
Bad free verse is mostly in this
form. Good free verse is not really made up of arbitrary lines. A look at type
verse will make this clear.
5. Type verse
Verse whose meaning and effect
depend on the choice and arrangement of type may be called type verse. The six
constituents of type are: 1. Shape, 2. Size, 3. Weight, 4. Width, 5. Posture
and 6. Colour. These may be varied in such a way so that the type seems a
shadow to the sense. My own verse-example of this form titled ‘The Typographic
Verse’ occurs in an essay titled ‘Metre And Free
Verse’. Since it is a bit too long, I am presenting a short but apt example,
which I am very fond of — my translation of a Tamil type verse by Elilmuthalvan:
Q
U
E
U
E’s
Crowded.
For more examples of type verse,
check out my article titled ‘Visual Poetics’.
6. Animated verse
In print, type is static. But on the
Internet, type can be set in motion. The dynamic use of type gives rise to
animated verse. Ana Maria Uribe calls her animated
verse ‘anipoems’. Since they cannot be reproduced in
a static article, check out her website http://vispo.com/uribe/anipoems.html
for some interesting examples of animated verse.
7. Hybrid verse
A mix of two or more forms yields
hybrid verse. T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ begins as rhymed free verse and
then becomes blank free verse. Jon Whyte’s ‘Coyotes’
is an interesting mix of metre and type verse. The odd stanzas of the poem are
in metre; and the even ones, in lines that visually represent the howl of
coyotes.
Conclusion
Rhymed free verse, blank free verse
and the prose-poem belong to the oral tradition. The found-poem, type verse and
animated verse belong to the visual tradition. Hybrid verse belongs to both.
Each of the seven forms of free
verse may have variations. For instance, blank free verse may be classified
under two types: end-stopped, if the sense stops at the end of each line; and enjambed, if the sense runs on from line to line. Also, it
is possible to consider animated verse as a variation of type verse, or
vice-versa.
These forms of free verse, whether
you classify them as more or less than seven, tell us that free verse is not
really characterised by formlessness. It may be inferior, as in found-poem; or
superior, as in type verse. G.S. Fraser only said that chopped-up prose
(found-poem) is no verse and made a case for free verse proper. Dr. Nirmal Selvamony, on the other
hand, has established that free verse, proper or otherwise, in the oral
tradition, is no verse at all (Free Verse, MCC Magazine, 2000-2001, 62-69). In
‘Visual Poetics’, I have argued that free verse really belongs to the visual
tradition, not to the oral. Free verse exponents must understand that what is
called vers libre
is not verse that is really free of all norms, but rather a meeting point
of the laws of the oral and the visual traditions.
Sources
Metre, Rhyme And
Free Verse: G.S. Fraser, Methuen & Co., 1970.
Rhyme’s Reason: John Hollander, New
Haven And London Yale University Press, 1981.
Metre, Rhythm And
Verse Form: Philip Hobsbaum, Routledge,
1996.
Free Verse: Nirmal
Selvamony (
Tinai2: Nirmaldasan
& Nirmal Selvamony
(Persons For Alternative Social Order, 2002).
Visual Poetics: Nirmaldasan,
2004 (http://www.writing-world.com/poetry/visual.shtml).
Ana Maria Uribe’s
Anipoems: http://vispo.com/uribe/anipoems.html