Types of Poem Forms - Vers Libre Poems

Vers Libre is simply one of today’s most popular poem forms and the reason is that many poets like the fact that it appears to follow no set rules. However, if you throw out the name Vers Libre to many people, you’ll get a puzzled look – because they may not understand that you are talking about a “Free Verse” poem form.

The best definition of Vers Libre (Free Verse) is that this type of poetry successfully avoids the need to follow fixed meter, rhyme schemes, and other such poetry rules. If you are thinking this makes writing a poem easier, you can forget that notion. Writing a successful and appealing Vers Libre poem is never easy even with less restrictive rules.

While French poetry often gets the credit for inventing this poetic form, the truth is that it has been around probably since written word has been around. One example would be the Christian Bible. However, it’s also evident in just about all religious text of all religions. Like all poem forms it has had its moments of popularity, especially during the Victorian age for English speaking poets and lovers of poetry. Today, next to the Japanese Haiku, Free Verse (Vers Libre) is the most popular form of poetry being taught to students from elementary school through high school.

I think the popularity of Vers Libre has a lot to do with the freeing part of writing and reading this poem form in that its format allows for enthusiastic abandonment in terms of just getting what you are trying to say out there in the universe.

• Hint: Think in terms as you set out to write Vers Libre how your native voice sounds as you will read your poem.

This poem form is not as “free for all -- anything goes” as it first appears to be. It does have its hidden rules and they can be summed up with one word: Rhythm. The reason for this is that rhythm plays a very important role in free verse. Readability (especially out-loud) in the form of poetry is hugely important, therefore, this veiled rule is a “must” in free verse. Also remember that any free verse poem repeating phrases and punctuation (such as commas) are natural ways to create rhythm.

• Another hint: Make sure your verse flows like the dancers on a ballet stage.
• Another hint: A good question to ask yourself when you have finished writing your free verse is: “Will your reader feel your poem to the marrow of their bones?”
• Lastly, another hint: Pay attention to the cadence of your words. Ask yourself is it balanced? When you read it, are there falling inflections of voice?

One of the reasons free verse or vers libre is hugely enduringly popular is that it lends itself ideally in terms of imagery and free expression when writing a poem to someone you love. The vers libre that I wrote below is one I wrote years ago to my husband. He is a man so different in background to the woman I was raised to be. I'm from the West Coast and he is from the mountains of Western Maryland. An often early discussion between us was about how we could possibly have ended up "a couple." The final conversation came on a day when we were hiking in the Saguaros National Forest and sleeping beneath the stars. That prompted me to write the poem to illustrate to "he who is always questioning fate" a possible answer in this poem:

One lonely night a star in a saguaros sky strayed far from home

Colliding with another desolate star

From just beyond the Eastern Continental Divide

And from that accident grew a love

From which neither star could hide.

The desert star came from a world filled

With saguaros, gambels, black-tails and ringtails.

She was born to middle-class affluence radiating

Hoola-hoops, slinks, and shiny new Schwins.

A virtual spinning constellation that dispelled

Love, attention, praise and pride.

Unfolded in a Disneyland home abundant

With music, books, and most of all - dreams,

In a 1950s self-absorbed confidence.

The snowflake star came from a land

Teeming with sugar maples, bobwhite, white-tails, and black bears.

He was born to agricultural poverty

Dispersed in endless chores, weariness, and anger.

A reality spinning in a configuration that could only

Sow hate, apathy, criticism, and self-loath.

Unfolded in a crazy-ruled home, inexhaustible in fear.

Still, a certain farm boy's innocence managed to be kept.

Two different worlds merging into a freshly tottering composition

So far apart, yet at the same time -- so close.

At times, neither fully able to comprehend the other,

At times, neither fully able to accept the other.

Each needing what the other had

Each having what the other lacked.

The integration of this new-fashioned new millennium pattern

One only that could be of God's creation

In His answer to a forsaken saguaro star's prayer

For it was she that petitioned for but one thing,

Just that one snow-covered star in her sun-baked lack

In His answer to a desolate snowflake star's petition,

For he too prayed but for one thing

Just one sun-sheltered star to shine in his heart.

Bill -- I will always love you -- for you are my star.

Jerilee Wei © 2011

After the Sea-ship by Walt Whitman

Derniers vers by Jules Laforgue

Discharged by W.E. Henley

Jubilate Agno by Christopher Smart

Humdrum and Harum-Scarum by Robert Bridges

Little Father by Li-Young Lee

Marriage by Marianne Moore

Philomela by Matthew Arnold

The Cruel Mistress by Robert Lewis Stephenson

The Light Keeper by Robert Lewis Stephenson

“No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job.” – T.S. Eliot

“I would as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.” – Robert Frost

“I’ve read some of your modern free verse and wonder who set it free.” – John Barrymore