Verse

Verse meaning

Even as far as poetry definitions are concerned, verse can take on a few meanings, depending on how and when it is used.

For example, the mass noun definition of verse refers to structured works usually written in a meter, more specifically, certain types of poems. In academia, it can also be used to describe a type of meter used, such as a hexameter verse. As a regular noun, it refers to one metrical line of a poem that is countable. Verse can also be used to describe what would normally be called a stanza, although this is a more casual definition.

When used as an adjective, verse describes a work that is poetic in form, such as a verse play.

There are two different types of verse in poetry, free and blank verse. They are grouped under types of verse but, in practice, are very different in approach.

Blank verse

Early forms of blank verse existed in Latin and Greek heroic verse. These structures were then adapted by Italian poets like Giovanni Rucellai, who was the first to use the term ‘versi sciolti’. This Italian term was translated into ‘blank verse’ when the structure spread to the English-speaking world.

Meter

Blank verse is most commonly written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Usually, blank verse is used in poetry, but Shakespeare used it in his plays, too. These could be described as verse plays.

Examples of blank verse

The first example of blank verse in an English language poem is probably by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who translated Virgil’s Aeneid (29-19 BC) in the mid-sixteenth century. Following this, William Shakespeare made extensive use of blank verse with iambic pentameter in both his poetry and his plays.

John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost (1667) is considered to be the first widely-read example of a modern English language blank verse poem. He closely followed the structure of the works of Homer and Virgil.

Often linked to epic poems of the Victorian era, blank verse was used extensively by poets like Elizabeth Barret Browning in long poems that are almost novels, like Aurora Leigh (1857).

Widely used by many poets now considered classics of the Western Canon, blank verse can also be spotted in famous poems from William Wordsworth’s The Prelude (1850) to Robert Frost’s Mending Wall (1914). Take a look at this more modern excerpt from Mending Wall and find the similarities to the previous poems written in blank verse.

Although blank verse was originally intended to sound close to the cadence of ordinary speech, it is now sometimes considered old fashioned due to the length of its lines and the formality of its structure.

Free verse

Free verse is a direct translation of ‘vers libre’. Antecedents exist as far back as the biblical Song of Songs, which was loosely based on the original Hebrew cadences.

Meter

Technically, free verse has no meter. It doesn’t rhyme and has no set structure, so it is considered non-metrical. Free verse tries to mimic the patterns of everyday speech and is considered more informal and flexible than blank verse. You may find that some poems that use free verse have their unique rhythms, but these are not set but are organic and improvised.

Examples of free verse

The French term ‘vers libre’ was first widely used by poets like Gustave Kahn and Jules Laforge in the 1880s. Although the French Symbolists preceded these poets and also made use of a form of free verse, it is generally accepted that this was the start of free verse’s mainstream uptake.

By 1918, free verse had been translated from ‘vers libre’ and had spread globally. The poet and critic Ezra Pound wrote this about free verse in In Retrospect (1918). He compares it to a musical phrase rather than a mechanical or predictable metronome.

Consider the difference between the rhythm of a metronome and how a song might sound, then take a look at the first verse of his poem The Return (1917). This is an early example of American free verse.

Later poets like Jorge Louis Borges expanded upon these original thoughts on free verse:

Perhaps the most famous and influential English language free verse pioneer was Walt Whitman. His poems inspired movements from Surrealism to the Beat Generation and poets from Pablo Neruda to Allen Ginsberg and Patricia Lockwood.

This verse from his poem O Captain! My Captain! (1865) shows how free verse can take on a graphical form.

Due to its flexibility and less formal nature, most contemporary poets have used free verse since the mid-20th century. There are many different examples to read from a variety of cultures and movements. A currently well-known British free verse poet is Carol Ann Duffy, who mixes free verse with a selection of meters to create different rhythms and tones in her work.

Verse versus prose

Typically, verse is different from prose because verse is normally arranged in lines that make up a stanza, which then makes up a poem. In contrast, prose is composed of sentences that make up a paragraph, which then makes up a novel, for example. Authors write prose, while poets create verses. Generally, verse relies more on rhythm than prose, but this is not always the case. At a very simplistic level, the difference is that prose is for novels, and verse is for poetry.

There are more similarities between free verse and prose than between prose and blank verse. Neither free verse nor prose is strictly metrical, and both seek to represent natural speech patterns.

¹ Ezra Pound, ‘A Retrospect’, thepoetryfoundation.org, 2022.

² Glossary: Free Verse, poetry.org, 2022.