Free Free Verse Generator
Generate free verse with line breaks that mean something. No forced rhyme, no padded meter, just image and rhythm.
A blank page, for now
Choose a form on the left, tell it what the poem is about, and it will write. You can edit every line afterwards.
Free, unlimited, no account needed. Press ⌘ Enter to write.
What is a free verse?
Free verse drops the meter and the rhyme scheme and keeps everything else: rhythm, image, the weight a line gains from where it ends. It is the most common form in modern poetry and the easiest to do badly, because without a form to push against, only the line breaks are holding the poem up.
The rules, exactly
- No fixed meter and no rhyme scheme unless one is requested.
- Use line breaks deliberately: break on images and turns, not on grammar.
- Vary line length so the shape of the poem carries meaning.
- Avoid filler words used only to pad a rhythm.
Where it comes from
Walt Whitman made the case for it in English with Leaves of Grass in 1855, borrowing cadence from the King James Bible rather than from metrical tradition. The modernists took it further, and by the middle of the twentieth century it had become the default mode.
so much depends upon a red wheel barrow