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Does there have to be meter and rhyme for a piece of writing to be called a poem?
Does free verse have certain patters too?
What if I wrote something like a poem but was never conscious of meter, or any pattern to be followed but rhymes every now and then? would that qualify as free verse?
1 Answer
- Anonymous7 years agoFavorite Answer
Yes, free verse can definitely have patterns like what you're describing. It doesn't have to, but it often does. Free verse poems often use sound effects such as occasional rhyme, usually internal (not end-of-line) rhyme.
And they often use rhythmical patterns. Walt Whitman's free verse often approaches and then recedes away from an iambic-pentameter pattern. Some free verse poems get closer to a regular meter near the end of the poem as a means of closure. There are all sorts of different rhythmical effects you can create in a free verse poem.
If you're really interested in this, here are two books that will tell you a lot more about this and give many examples:
"Free Verse: An Essay on Prosody" by Charles Hartman; and
"Poetic Closure" by Barbara Herrnstein Smith.