Out of respect for the early free-versers, in particular Ezra Pound, I should point out that there was a hesitancy on their part to adopt the name "free verse", from the French vers libre.  They recognized that free verse was, ultimately, just one more poetry technique, and I don't think it was their intention (or expectation) that it should overwhelm the entire world of poetry, pushing out all other techniques.  Nonetheless, over the years, free-versers have adopted the notion that they have greater freedom than formalist poets, and that idea bears examination.

The freedom of free verse is, simply, to write lines of varying length within a given poem.  Formalist poets have a similar freedom, in that they can choose different line lengths for different poems; but within a given poem they usually stick to a given line length or pattern of line lengths.  So the freedom of the formalist is to change the meter or form from one poem to the next.  The free-verser, on the other hand, has given up the freedom of adopting different forms from one poem to the next, since he doesn't use forms.

So the freedom of the free-versers is essentially a tradeoff.  Indeed, on close examination it becomes apparent that free-versers have traded away more freedom than they have gained.

What is it, after all, that gives a poet freedom?  Poetry involves certain techniques, and it is those techniques which distinguish poetry from prose.  Here is a short list:

Rhythm
Meter
Line breaks

Enjambments
Form (as in the sonnet, ballad, villanelle, etc.)
Distinctive or unusual syntax
End-rhyme
Internal rhyme
Alliteration
Assonance
Parallelism

Repetition

Metaphor
Symbolism

Of those elements, a poet need only give up "meter" and "form" in order to write free verse; and indeed, many excellent free-verse poems have been written which employ rhythm, rhyme, parallelism, alliteration, assonance and other techniques.  As I show in my article "Is It Poetry or Prose?",  Archibald MacLeish used a plethora of techniques in writing "Ars Poetica".  And Coventry Patmore used end-rhyme for his 19th century free-verse poem "Maga Est Veritas" (yes, that classic poem is free verse!).  That the modernists abandoned all techniques but the line break was there own doing, not the requirement of their craft.

But why the free-versers went off on a prosaic binge is not the subject of this article.  My point is simple:  The poet who has the greatest freedom is the poet who has the greatest number of techniques at his disposal.  And indeed, I would extend that further by saying that the greatest poets of our literature are, generally though not always, those poets who use the widest number of poetic techniques.  There are exceptions, of course, such as Whitman and Dickinson, but they are in the minority.

Power in poetry is in having freedom of choice, not just the choice to use erratic line lengths within a given poem, but the choice of techniques with which to create moods and effects.  The free-verser, by giving up many of those choices, simply limits himself to a smaller pool of techniques.  Iambs, anapests, trochees and dactyls all evoke different moods.  Some are rising rhythms and some are falling rhythms; some are staccato and some are relaxed and speedy.  How many feet of these rhythms get strung together also affects the mood – short lines evoke different moods from long lines.  Having established a particular rhythm, the formalist poet can then vary the rhythm for dramatic effect (although some formalist poets disapprove of this), or vary the line length (an occasional long or short line is not an error, it is a technique).

By abandoning meter, free-versers also reduce the effectiveness of the one technique that they desperately hold onto:  line breaks.  Line breaks in free-verse either serve no purpose (like the line breaks in prose) or they create startling enjambments; but startling enjambments lose their power when used too often.  In metered poetry, the poetic texture is created by the meter, so line breaks and enjambments don't carry that burden.  That frees up enjambments to be used sparingly and effectively.  When a phrase falls at the end of a line, its meaning is usually given extra emphasis.  When an enjambments occurs, the meaning phrase can be altered or a secondary meaning introduced.  ...

; and lines of iambic tetrameter create a distinctly different mood from lines of iambic pentameter; and lines of iambic pentameter which contain one or two anapests create yet a different mood; and lines of anapestic pentameter create a different mood, which is also different from the mood created by lines of anapestic tetrameter.  And I haven't even mentioned the falling rhythms yet!  The combinations of nuances are endless, and all of them are lost to free-versers.

The word "free" in the term "free verse" refers to freedom of line length, meaning that the line lengths of the poem are not fixed in any way.  The logical opposite of free verse is metered poetry, which has set line lengths, or patterns of line lengths, throughout the poem.  Throughout history, the vast majority of English poetry has been written in meter.  But starting in the mid-1880's, meter was abandoned by many poets, and within 20 years free verse became the norm.  This change from metered poetry to free verse was called the "Modern" movement (although now it is more than 100 years old).  The question that I am examining in this article is:  Has abandoning meter really given free verse poets any freedom?

Before continuing, I should mention that it is possible to write a poem without fixed line lengths but with a fixed rhythm (such as an iambic, anapestic or dactyllic rhythm), or to write a poem with fixed line lengths but without a fixed rhythm.  The early free-verse poets, who still had the echoes of traditional poetry in their ears, tended to write in iambic and anapestic rhythms, though their line lengths varied.  But by the mid-20th century, most of the rhythm had gone out of free verse, leaving us with a style that was very prose-like.  Since both fixed line lengths and fixed rhythms have been abandoned by modern free-verse poets, I am lumping those two characteristics together under the term "meter" for the purposes of this article.

Poetry is a craft, and like all crafts, it has its tools.  I am not referring to desk, pen and paper, or computer and printer, but to the elements which distinguish poetry from other literary forms.  Poetry, like all things, is defined by its characteristics.  We can tell a poem from a short story, a short story from a novel, and a novel from a reference book by their respective characteristics.  An author working in a particular genre must have a command of the characteristics of that genre, and thus those characteristics his tools.  Meter, being a characteristic of poetry, is simply one tool available to the poet.

Prior to the Modern period, a poet might abandon a given tool in an occasional poem in order to achieve a certain effect (blank verse, for example, is written without rhyme).  But modern free-verse poets have abandoned meter in all of their poems.  The mistake that free-verse poets make is in believing that meter is a limitation.  If it is, it is so only for poets who have not mastered it.  Like every other tool, it enhances a poem in its own ways, ways which cannot be achieved by other means.  Indeed, meter may be the most important of all the tools, since it provides a poem's rhythmic structure, the context within which all the other tools are implemented.  Without the cadence of meter, one is left with prose ... and then it's not poetry any more, is it?

Many sophisticates say that they simply don't like the sound of meter, but I don't buy that.  The human ear naturally likes rhythm and structured sound patterns, the qualities imparted by meter.  Since the current free-verse trend started as a reaction to Victorian rigidity, perhaps what they mean is that they don't like the heavily cadenced sound of Victorian poetry.  But meter is a flexible tool that can be used lightly or heavily and otherwise adapted to the needs of a poem, so there is no need to abandon it entirely (see Frost's "Home Burial" for an example of a lightly cadenced poem).  A more likely explanation is that these sophisticates, like other artists in this "anything goes" age, simply don't want to invest the time and energy required to learn their craft.

Let's take a closer look at meter and see what it does for poetry.  As stated above, it provides a uniform and coherent rhythmic texture.  Rhythm is infectious and helps to carry the reader along, thus giving the poem momentum.  Rhythmic texture is particularly important for long poems, which need some kind of unifying structure to give them continuity and cohesion.  The kind of intense focus required to read free verse simply cannot be sustained over long works.  Perhaps this is why free verse has become so prosaic in recent years:  unable to sustain such intensity in every poem, free-verse poets have turned to prose to lessen the intensity.

Meter also provides emphasis.  The regular rhythms and predictable line lengths build an expectation in the reader, causing the reader to give emphasis to phrases that occur at the ends of lines.  If the end of a sentence or a caesura coincides with the end of a line, the emphasis is intensified.  Thus, by carefully arranging sentences and phrases within a stanza, a skillful poet can provide the greatest emphasis where it is most needed, increasing the drama of the poem.

Free verse, on the other hand, creates no expectation in the reader, and phrases occurring at the ends of lines receive no special emphasis.  The poet must use other techniques to keep the poem from sagging, such as unexpected enjambments and stark imagery; or he must revert to prose.  But enjambments and sensational imagery lose their power when they are over-used, and prosaic poetry lacks the beauty that most readers seek.  There really is no substitute for meter.

I am going to use one of Shakespeare's most famous sonnets as an example of the emphasis imparted by meter.  (I might have used a more modern example, but I did not want to spend the time getting reprint permission.)  This sonnet also contains an effective use of enjambments, and demonstrates how enjambments gain power in the context of meter.

Here are the opening lines as written:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments.  Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.

Here are those lines as free verse:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.
Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.

In the original poem, the line breaks occur where they do because of the meter, and the first two line breaks result in enjambments.  The first sentence of the poem extends through to the middle of the second line.  That sentence begins in a grand sweep culminating in the word "minds", and then it relaxes into a more thoughtful tone ("Admit impediments").  It is the enjambment at the end of the first line that makes this shift in tone possible, primarily by introducing a pause.  Without the enjambment, the burden would fall on the reader to extend the grand sweep to the end of the sentence, but that doesn't work very well.  By the end of "impediments", the grand tone is diffusing, and the sentence has lost power.

The enjambment at the end of the second line gives strong emphasis to the phrase "Love is not love", thereby enhancing the meaning of the poem.

It is possible to take break those lines in a third way:

Let me not
to the marriage of true minds admit
impediments.  Love is not love which alters
when it alteration finds, or bends
with the remover to remove.

Because of its use of unexpected enjambments, this example is more compelling than the first free-verse example.  The line breaks are, to an extent, in opposition to the meaning, which creates an interesting tension.  However, this effect quickly becomes tedious when extended over the entire poem.  Such opposing enjambments should be used sparingly, yet free-verse poets use them liberally.  They do that to compensate for the missing emphases that would otherwise be provided by meter, and to add spice to lines that would otherwise be drab.

If these were the only things that meter provided, they would be enough to justify its use; but there is more.  Meter provides mood and emotional context, as well as  

It has not been my intention to argue here that all free verse is inferior to all metered verse.  Free verse has its applications, and in some instances is the medium of choice to convey certain feelings.  But the best free verse will always have musical rhythms, such as those found in Whitman's work, in Patmore's "Maga Est Veritas", and in MacLeish's "Ars Poetica".  Without these musical rhythms—the rhythms which meter organize and enhance—we have only prose.

As poets, let us not abandon the elements of our craft in the name of progress.  Instead of abandoning meter, there are ways to relax it to meet our expressive and creative needs.  Meter need not be rigid.  The human ear can hear and appreciate the regularity of a meter even when the poet sw