Free verse poems don't follow the rules. Find out more about them in this Bitesize primary KS2 English guide.

The rushing vivacious wave engulfs me underneath its surf I thrash my limbs submerged helplessly trying to reach for the waters palm and push my weight up My lips meet the surface and feel the… ...

In formal poetry, ideas and language are fenced in, so to speak, and this both tames their savagery and compresses their power. Not true with free verse, where the poem can easily run on at a wild ...

The New Yorker does occasionally publish rhymed verse under current poetry editor Paul Muldoon (with whom Baker conducts one of those imaginary friendships he does well).

Recently we challenged listeners to write an American Sonnet: A non-rhyming, free verse, 14 line poem. We got a lot of response, and we jumped into the fierce debate over what makes a sonnet.

“This idea of the free verse poem as ‘chopped’ prose,” Elisa Gabbert writes in her lead essay for the poetry issue, “comes from Ezra Pound via Marjorie Perloff, who quotes Pound in her ...