ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how free verse is composed, not so much as a guide as to how to do it but as an investigation into how free verse arrives on the page or in the air. It looks at the process of writing free verse from the initial impulses through to the forming of the shape of the poem and the particular rhythms that drive it. One of the key points here concerns creativity and rhetorical choice: when is it that the form of a poem suggests itself? When does the unconscious become conscious and a matter for the art of writing or composition? More specific considerations include how to end a line and how poems themselves end. Writers themselves have commented on the processes of composition, and selections are made here to focus on rhythmic considerations. Finally, the chapter looks at the teaching of writing, conscious that many writing programs and courses ‘teach’ the writing of free verse. An extended example is used to show how the process works from beginning to end, prefiguring the longer example in Chapter 15.
