Verse (Written Conventions of English)

VERSE (Written Conventions of English)

Some language is purposely made different from the everyday style we call "prose." Verse might use meter (rhythm) or rhyme, but maybe not. Poetry is a very special kind of verse, more serious in intent--and harder to write!

• Greeting cards might be written in verse, but it's not poetry:

          Roses are red
          Violets are blue
          Sugar is sweet
          and so are you.

• Blank verse is poetry with meter but not rhyme; much of Shakespeare is written in blank verse:

          To be, or not to be, that is the question:
          Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
          The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
          Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
          And by opposing end them.

• Free verse is poetry that's more like natural speech, but cut into poetic lines with an irregular rhythm, like this from Walt Whitman:

          A noiseless patient spider,
          I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
          Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
          It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
          Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

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(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)