Editing Free verse (section)

==Antecedents==
As the [[French-language]] term ''vers libre'' suggests, this technique of using more irregular cadences is often said to have its origin in the practices of 19th-century French poets such as [[Gustave Kahn]] and [[Jules Laforgue]], in his ''Derniers vers'' of 1890. Taupin, the US-based French poet and critic, concluded that free verse and ''vers libre'' are not synonymous, since "the French language tends to give equal [[Syllable weight|weight]] to each spoken syllable, whereas English syllables vary in quantity according to whether [[Stress (linguistics)|stressed or unstressed]]."<ref>Taupin, Rene. ''The Influence of French Symbolism on Modern American Poetry'' (1986), (translated by William Pratt), Ams Studies in Modern Literature, {{ISBN|0-404-61579-1}}</ref>

The sort of cadencing that we now recognize in free verse can be traced back at least as far as the [[Biblical Hebrew]] [[psalmist]] poetry of the [[Bible]].<ref name="allen" /> By referring to the [[s:Psalms|Psalms]], it is possible to argue that free verse in English first appeared in the 1380s in the [[John Wycliffe]] translation of the [[Psalms]] and was repeated in different form in most [[biblical translation]]s ever since.

[[Walt Whitman]], who based his long lines in his poetry collection ''[[Leaves of Grass]]'' on the phrasing of the [[King James Bible]], influenced later American free verse composers, notably [[Allen Ginsberg]].<ref name="Kirby-Smith1998">{{cite book|author=H. T. Kirby-Smith|title=The Origins of Free Verse|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6N4IZIjmiCkC&pg=PA44|year=1998|publisher=University of Michigan Press|isbn=0-472-08565-4|page=44}}</ref> One form of free verse was employed by [[Christopher Smart]] in his long poem ''[[Jubilate Agno]]'' ([[Latin]]: ''Rejoice in the Lamb''), written some time between 1759 and 1763 but not published until 1939.

Many poets of the [[Victorian era]] experimented with free verse. [[Christina Rossetti]], [[Coventry Patmore]], and [[T. E. Brown]] all wrote examples of rhymed but unmetered verse, poems such as [[W. E. Henley]]'s "Discharged" (from his ''In Hospital'' sequence).

Free verse in English was persuasively advocated by critic [[T. E. Hulme]] in his ''[[A Lecture on Modern Poetry]]'' (1908). Later in the preface to ''Some Imagist Poets'' 1916, he comments, "Only the name is new, you will find something much like ''vers libre'' in [[John Dryden|Dryden]]'s ''Threnodia Augustalis''; a great deal of [[John Milton|Milton]]'s ''[[Samson Agonistes]]'', and the oldest in [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer's]] ''[[The House of Fame|House of Fame]]''."<ref>Preface to ''Some Imagist Poets'', Constable, 1916</ref>

In France, a few pieces in [[Arthur Rimbaud]]'s [[prose poem]] collection ''[[Illuminations (poems)|Illuminations]]'' were arranged in manuscript in lines, rather than prose, and in the Netherlands, [[tachtiger]] (i.e., a member of the 1880s generation of innovative poets) [[Frederik van Eeden]] employed the form at least once in his poem "Waterlelie" ("Water Lily").<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://4umi.com/vaneeden/waterlelie.htm|title=De waterlelie < Frederik van Eeden|website=4umi.com}}</ref>

[[Goethe]] in some early poems, such as "[[Prometheus (Goethe)|Prometheus]]" and also [[Hölderlin]] used free verse occasionally, due in part to a misinterpretation of the meter used in [[Pindar]]'s poetry. Hölderlin also continued to write unmetered poems after discovering this error.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=ELuZzgnE81MC&pg=PR15 Michael Hamburger: ''Foreword''] in Robert Marcellus Browning (ed.): ''German poetry from 1750 to 1900'' (''The German Library'', vol. 39), New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1984, p. XV, {{ISBN|0-8264-0282-8}}</ref>

The German poet [[Heinrich Heine]] made an important contribution to the development of free verse with 22 poems, written in two-poem cycles, called ''Die Nordsee'' (''The North Sea'') (written 1825–1826).<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wcnooASgpFIC&q=%22free+verse%22+heine+north+sea&pg=PR17 |title=Songs of Love and Grief: A Bilingual Anthology in the Verse Forms of the ...|via=Google Books |date=22 November 1995 |isbn=9780810113244 |access-date=2013-04-23|last1=Heine |first1=Heinrich |publisher=Northwestern University Press }}</ref> These were first published in ''Buch der Lieder'' (''Book of Songs'') in 1827.