# What's your favorite free-verse poem?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [February 25, 2016, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075 "2016-02-25T07:21:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2016, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/21 "2016-02-27T13:59:27Z")

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> [@gigi](#):
>
> honour corruption villainy holiness  
> riding in fragrance of sunlight(side by side  
> all in a singing wonder of blossoming yes  
> riding) to him who died that death should be dead  
> humblest and proudest eagerly wandering
> 
> (equally all alive in miraculous day)  
> merrily moving through sweet forgiveness of spring  
> (over the under the gift of the earth of the sky  
> knight and ploughman pardoner wife and nun  
> merchant frere clerk somnour miller and reve
> 
> and geoffrey and all)come up from the never of when  
> come into the now of forever come riding alive  
> down while crylessly drifting through vast most  
> nothing’s own nothing children go of dust

That’s lovely, and thank you for introducing me to it, but it’s not free verse – there’s a clear pattern of slant rhyme, abab cdcd efef gg, and while the number of _unstressed_ syllables tends to vary, the lines are all pentameters. It’s recognizably a sonnet, even if it’s looser of form than most.

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**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2016, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/22 "2016-02-27T21:08:50Z")

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> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#):
>
> That’s lovely, and thank you for introducing me to it, but it’s not free verse – there’s a clear pattern of slant rhyme, abab cdcd efef gg, and while the number of _unstressed_ syllables tends to vary, the lines are all pentameters. It’s recognizably a sonnet, even if it’s looser of form than most.

:smack: Thanks. I was afraid of that. I was also going to post a favorite Gerard Manley Hopkins but it said something about “sprung verse” and a pattern to his too.

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**Author:** ![Fatwater\_Fewl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/4491bb/32.png) [@Fatwater\_Fewl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fatwater_Fewl)\
**Post date:** [February 28, 2016, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-free-verse-poem/747075/23 "2016-02-28T17:55:55Z")

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[I’ve Tasted My Blood](http://www.poetryinvoice.com/poems/ive-tasted-my-blood), by Milton Acorn

> [@](#):
>
> If this brain’s over-tempered  
> consider that the fire was want  
> and the hammers were fists.  
> I’ve tasted my blood too much  
> to love what I was born to.
> 
> But my mother’s look  
> was a field of brown oats, soft-bearded;  
> her voice rain and air rich with lilacs:  
> and I loved her too much to like  
> how she dragged her days like a sled over gravel…

Read the final two stanzas at the link in the title. It’s well worth it.

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