Chapter 21 Open Form

Question 1

Psalms

Answer 1

Sacred songs, usually referring to the 150 Hebrew poems collected in the Old Testament.

Question 2

Projective Verse

Answer 2

Charles Olson’s theory that poets compose by listening to their own breathing and using it as a rhymed guide rather than poetic meter or form.

Question 3

Free Verse

Answer 3

From the French vers libre. This describes poetry that organizes its lines without meter. It may be rhymed (as in some poems by H. O.), but it usually is not. There is no one means of organizing this, and different authors have used irreconcilable systems. What unites the two approaches is a freedom from metrical regularity.

Question 4

Open Form

Answer 4

Verse that has no set formal scheme - no meter, rhyme, or even set stanzaic pattern. This is always in free verse.

Question 5

Prose Poems

Answer 5

Poetic language printed in prose paragraphs, but displaying the careful attention to sound, imagery, and figurative language characteristic of poetry.