Free Verse Quotes

Free verse is like free love, it is a contradiction in terms.

~ G.k. Chesterton

Just as in the second part of a verse bad poets seek a thought to fit their rhyme, so in the second half of their lives people tend to become more anxious about finding actions, positions, relationships that fit those of their earlier lives, so that everything harmonizes quite well on the surface: but their lives are no longer ruled by a strong thought, and instead, in its place, comes the intention of finding a rhyme.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I am bothered by poems I don't understand.

~ Joyce Rachelle

And stay, my dearstay...forever, as my quiet song,in my lilac dawn.

~ Sanober Khan

A midst deceit I found the truth;there in the rough I found a diamond.And from the moment we met,I think of no one elseToday I choose to be, to live and breathe;to dream, to weep, and to sing in free verse.And you, the object of my delight:a like-minded opposite I am myself with,a mind-fuck times six, seven, eight thousand and three.I know that you love me with every inch of your deep.

~ Donato Dicristino

in the endit is wordspoetry. sunsetssomeone’s deep blue silk voice.mountain scents.someone’s smile.eyes. that we haveno defenses against.

~ Sanober Khan

Scatter as a prayerescaping my lips...as orchidsblooming in clouds.

~ Sanober Khan

The ocean-blue bowl won’t refuse to bruise, won’t hold it back from the gaping earth-wounds.There will still come water, chill wind and happy goosebumps, and in the utmost corners of oaks, leaves laughing.

~ Bryana Johnson

If You KnewWhat if you knew you'd be the lastto touch someone?If you were taking tickets, for example,at the theater, tearing them,giving back the ragged stubs,you might take care to touch that palmbrush your fingertipsalong the lifeline's crease.When a man pulls his wheeled suitcasetoo slowly through the airport, whenthe car in front of me doesn't signal,when the clerk at the pharmacywon't say thank you, I don't rememberthey're going to die.A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.They'd just had lunch and the waiter,a young gay man with plum black eyes,joked as he served the coffee, kissedher aunt's powdered cheek when they left.Then they walked half a block and her auntdropped dead on the sidewalk.How close does the dragon's spumehave to come? How wide does the crackin heaven have to split?What would people look likeif we could see them as they are,soaked in honey, stung and swollen,reckless, pinned against time?

~ Ellen Bass

There is a moon,that rests in the quiet cornersof a lover’s lips.

~ Sanober Khan

You should be more carefulwhen you move, my dearwhat with you...spilling moonlightinto my poem, with a mereflick of your hand.

~ Sanober Khan

From our solitudewe shall create,forge songs ,pour in the reflectionof the stars and refresh the mindabout the silk-ridden roads that wait for them who have forgotten to feel.

~ Tara Estacaan

Friend who has fired the kingfishers and flamed the dragonflies – they catch your light however they move and beam it out of their eyes.

~ Bryana Johnson

By(e) pen, I've tried my hand at poetry; only to see how boring it is to me. That is, unless I get a chance to destroy each and every piece while doing it as I please.

~ Criss Jami

Have you everhad so much to saythat your mouth closed up tightstruggling to harnessthe nuclear forcecoalescing within your words?Have you everhad so many thoughtschurning inside you that you didn’tdare let them escapein case they blew you wide open?Have you everbeen so angry that youcouldn’t look in the mirrorfor fear of finding the face of evilglaring back at you?

~ Ellen Hopkins

It is something to have gazed on the constellated white, felt it running from the eyes and the pores: the salt of love. It is something to have whispered wild thank-yous in the only ways we know how.

~ Bryana Johnson

Dead ButterflyBy Ellen BassFor months my daughter carried a dead monarch in a quart mason jar. To and from school in her backpack, to her only friend’s house. At the dinner table it sat like a guest alongside the pot roast. She took it to bed, propped by her pillow. Was it the year her brother was born? Was this her own too-fragile baby that had lived—so briefly—in its glassed world? Or the year she refused to go to her father’s house? Was this the holding-her-breath girl she became there? This plump child in her rolled-down socks I sometimes wanted to haul back inside me and carry safe again. What was her fierce commitment? I never understood. We just lived with the dead winged thing as part of her, as part of us, weightless in its heavy jar.

~ Ellen Bass