Free verse Quotes

“Free verse is like free love”

“..."vers libre," (free verse) or nine-tenths of it, is not a new metre any more than sleeping in a ditch is a new school of architecture.”

“Modernism in other arts brought extreme difficulty. In poetry, the characteristic difficulty imported under the name of modernism was obscurity. But obscurity could just as easily be a quality of metrical as of free verse.”

“The voice is raised, and that is where poetry begins. And even today, in the prolonged aftermath of modernism, in places where 'open form' or free verse is the orthodoxy, you will find a memory of that raising of the voice in the term 'heightened speech.'”

“If he's a poet, why's he in jail?" demanded a suspicious voice. Madam Chairwoman shrugged velvet shoulders. "Perhaps he writes free verse," she suggested cunningly. A stir of approval answered her. Mice are all for people being free, so that they too can be freed form their eternal task of cheering prisoners--so that they can stay snug at home, nibbling the family cheese, instead of sleeping out in damp straw on a diet of stale bread.”

“Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”

“Sanity is a sonnet with a strict meter and rhyme scheme-and my mind is free verse.”

“I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.”

“If there has been one overriding change in poetic practice, it is that under the influence of free verse the poets have made a primary virtue out of exactitude and economy of meaning: this has replaced metrical skill as the first thing the poet tunes to.”