Part 1: Analysis of Free Verse Poetry

Read two examples of free verse poetry from the list below. Read the poems (or portions of the poems if they're long—at least 20 lines), then describe your impression of the poems. Consider the following questions:

- What do you think they were about?
- How did you feel about the lack of structure, such as rhyming and regular verses?
- How did reading them make you feel?

Part 2: Write Your Own Free Verse Poem

Write your own free verse poem. You may want to start by writing a prose paragraph, then break it up into meaningful lines as you write about your subject. Experiment with different versions: one with long lines, one with short lines, one mixed, and see which you prefer. Feel free to change things as you go.

Example of a Free Verse Poem by Carl Sandburg:

Fog
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Other Poems by Carl Sandburg:

- Buffalo Bill
- Upstairs
- Wilderness
- Young Bullfrogs
- Laughing Corn

Poems by Walt Whitman:

- There was a Child went Forth
- A Farm-Picture
- Warble for Lilac-Time
- The Torch
- A Clear Midnight

Poems by Pablo Neruda:

- In the Night
- Lost in the Forest
- You Sing

Poems by E. E. Cummings:

- because it's
- Little Tree
- Spring Is

Please choose your poems and write your impressions as instructed.

The student's question is about exploring and understanding the form and structure in free verse poetry, including how the decisions on line breaks and rhythm contribute to the poem's overall message and emotional impact. It also involves writing one's own free verse poetry to experience the effect of different structural choices firsthand.

The subject of the student's question is free verse poetry, and it concerns exploring the different ways that poets make decisions about the form and structure of their work, even within the looser constraints of free verse. The task involves reading and interpreting examples of free verse poetry by Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, and others to understand the impression made by their poems and the poets' intentions behind their lack of conventional structure such as rhyming and regular meter. The question also encourages the student to write their own free verse poem, focusing on how the arrangement of words and line breaks contribute to the tone, images, mood, and music of the poem. By discussing the difference made by new lines and the rhythm of the poem, the student is encouraged to appreciate the subtle structure and patterns present even in free verse.

When writing free verse poetry vers libre in Latin, poets like Robert Frost have likened it to "playing tennis without a net," indicating that while free verse does not follow the regular patterns of meter or rhyme, it relies on other elements like thematic, syntactic, or semantic repetition for coherence. It is important for the student to recognize that free verse still involves deliberate poetic choices about where to place words and how line beginnings and endings affect the reading of a poem. Even without rigid structure, decisions made about these elements can evoke strong emotion and emphasize certain parts of the content being conveyed. Thus, experimenting with different line breaks can significantly impact the overall effect and communication of a poem.