FREE VERSE POEMS

Free verse is just what it says it is - poetry that is written without proper rules about form, rhyme, rhythm, meter, etc. Here's one of my favorite free verse poems:

Fog by Carl Sandburg

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city

on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Here is another example of free verse:

"spring equinox" by Peter Blue Cloud

Now day and night sit balanced.
From a silence that seemed forever,
the first booming crash of break-up
thunders from the river. Smiling,

an elder oils the handle of a hoe

and listens for the great, warm wind.

Creation is a song, a trickling become
a gurgling, chucling water voice.
Winds which bend the snows to melting
carry clouds of rain storms on shoulder.

Green islands appear on turtle's back

grasses long asleep beneath the snow.

Dawn of a glorious season, flowers
in merging, undulating waves of color
The taste of strawberries, anticipate
in their blossoms, the rich and fertile

smells of soil we bend to,

breaking the ground for summer's corn.

In free verse the writer makes his/her own rules. Free verse can be a great way to "get things off your chest" and express what you really feel.

Here is an example.

Winter Poem by Nikki Giovanni

once a snowflake fell

on my brow and i loved

it so much and i kissed

it and it was happy and called its cousins

and brothers and a web

of snow engulfed me then

i reached to love them all

and i squeezed them and they became

a spring rain and i stood perfectly

still and was a flower

Remember how you reconstructed the rhymed poems? See if you can do the same thing with these free verse poems. You'll have to use what Frost called "the sound of sense" this means that you'll have to think about how the phrases and sentences need to be ordered in order to make the poem make sense.

"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden

"The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens

"The Moon Sails Out" by Federico Garcia Lorca

From "Tao te Ching" by Lao Tzu

"An Old Man's Thought of School" by Walt Whitman

"The lower leaves of the trees" by Sone No Yoshitada

Hope you're inspired because now it's time for you to create an original free verse poem.

  1. Think of images, descriptive words, and figurative language that best describe you.
  2. Jot them down in web form or in a list as you think of them.
  3. Turn your ideas into a paragraph or paragraphs.
  4. Go back and break the paragraph into lines. As you do this, revise the lines until they look, feel, and sound right to you. Draft, revise, and edit.
  5. Now, for the real test, read it ALOUD. Does it really paint a clear picture?
  6. Share your poem with someone else. Listen to his or her critique of your poem. A critique is when someone tells you the strengths and weaknesses of your work. DON'T GET MAD, LISTEN to the suggestions. Revise your work. Remember, the BEST writers are REWRITERS!
  7. Give your poem a title.
  8. Type and choose a font that adds to the look of your poem.
  9. Illustrate your poem.

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