Poetry in which there are
no regular
rhymes,
stanzaic forms, or metrical
patterns.
Free verse is a style with no restrictions, and therefore quite
liberating.
Perhaps the first
poet to bring free
verse to
the masses
in America was
Walt Whitman, but the
movement was said to be started by a bunch of
French poets, including
Arthur Rimbaud, rebelling against the strict
meter and rhyme standards of their time and place. A good portion (and wide variety) of
twentieth century poetry was wrought in the free verse style, including the work of
T.S. Eliot,
Ezra Pound,
Rainer Maria Rilke, and
Charles Bukowski.