What is free-form or open-form verse?

Free form or open form verse describes poetry that does not follow rules or standards of rhyme, meter, and rhythm. In contrast, closed or fixed form verse follows the rules and patterns of these characteristics. Free or open verse is considered a little more modern because it does not follow these "rules" of what poetry should look and sound like. Sometimes free form verse has a quality more like the natural flow of speech.

Let's compare two poems: one free form, one fixed form.

The World Below the Brine, by Walt Whitman, is an example of free or open form verse. Here is an excerpt:

"...Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling close to the bottom,

The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting with his flukes,

The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sea-leopard, and the sting-ray,

Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths, breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do..."

Note how this poem doesn't ascribe to fixed patterns of rhyme and rhythm.

Now, let's have a look at Edgar Allen Poe's Annabel Lee. The poem begins:

"It was many and many a year ago,

   In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

   By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

   Than to love and be loved by me."

Even in this first stanza of the poem, we can see a very clear pattern of rhyme, rhythm, and meter.