50 OF THE BEST FREE VERSE POEMS FROM CONTEMPORARY POETS

50 OF THE BEST FREE VERSE POEMS FROM CONTEMPORARY POETS

Robert Frost called free verse “playing with the net down.” And T.S. Eliot wrote, “No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job.” Yet Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, and plenty of contemporary poets are among the many who have written beautiful work in free verse. But what are free verse poems, anyway, and why the controversy?

WHAT ARE FREE VERSE POEMS?

Free verse is here defined as a poem with no set meter or verse that mimics natural speech patterns. Free verse poems can be short or long, contain sporadic rhymes or none at all, and be conveyed in spoken or written mediums. Because a free verse poem isn’t tied to any specific form, poets generally have more room to experiment with structure than they would with other styles.

Critics argue that since they contain no regular rhyme and meter, free verse poems are just glorified prose. But those who write or appreciate free verse feel that free verse has its own tools beyond meter or rhyme—like punctuation, line break, and vocabulary—that makes it just as legitimate of a poetic form as other styles.

THE BEST FREE VERSE POEMS

Still confused about what free verse poetry encompasses and need a few examples? Check out these 50 exceptional free verse poems, from the famous to the up-and-coming and everything in-between.

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1. “WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN’D ASTRONOMER” BY WALT WHITMAN

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

2. “MOTHER TO SON” BY LANGSTON HUGHES

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3. “FROM BLOSSOMS” BY LI-YOUNG LEE

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward

signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

4. “THE POOL” BY H.D.

Are you alive?

I touch you.

You quiver like a sea-fish.

I cover you with my net.

What are you—banded one?

5. “I CARRY YOUR HEART WITH ME (I CARRY IT IN MY HEART)” BY E.E. CUMMINGS

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6. “RISK” BY ANAÏS NIN

And then the day came,

when the risk

to remain tight

in a bud

was more painful

than the risk

it took

to blossom.

7. “SLOE GIN” BY SEAMUS HEANEY

The clear weather of juniper

darkened into winter.

She fed gin to sloes

and sealed the glass container.

When I unscrewed it

I smelled the disturbed

tart stillness of a bush

rising through the pantry.

When I poured it

it had a cutting edge

and flamed

like Betelgeuse.

I drink to you

in smoke-mirled, blue-

black sloes, bitter

and dependable.

8. “ACCENT” BY RUPI KAUR

9. “ANNE HATHAWAY” BY CAROL ANN DUFFY

‘Item I gyve unto my wief my second best bed…’

(from Shakespeare’s will)

The bed we loved in was a spinning world

of forests, castles, torchlight, cliff-tops, seas

where he would dive for pearls. My lover’s words

were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses

on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme

to his, now echo, assonance; his touch

a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.

Some nights I dreamed he’d written me, the bed

a page beneath his writer’s hands. Romance

and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.

In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,

dribbling their prose. My living laughing love—

I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head

as he held me upon that next best bed.

10. “THE CRICKETS HAVE ARTHRITIS” BY SHANE KOYCZAN

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11. “THE GOOD LIFE” BY TRACY K. SMITH

When some people talk about money

They speak as if it were a mysterious lover

Who went out to buy milk and never

Came back, and it makes me nostalgic

For the years I lived on coffee and bread,

Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday

Like a woman journeying for water

From a village without a well, then living

One or two nights like everyone else

On roast chicken and red wine.

12. “PRAISE THE RAIN” BY JOY HARJO

Praise the rain; the seagull dive

The curl of plant, the raven talk—

Praise the hurt, the house slack

The stand of trees, the dignity—

Praise the dark, the moon cradle

The sky fall, the bear sleep—

Praise the mist, the warrior name

The earth eclipse, the fired leap—

Praise the backwards, upward sky

The baby cry, the spirit food—

Praise canoe, the fish rush

The hole for frog, the upside-down—

Praise the day, the cloud cup

The mind flat, forget it all—

Praise crazy. Praise sad.

Praise the path on which we’re led.

Praise the roads on earth and water.

Praise the eater and the eaten.

Praise beginnings; praise the end.

Praise the song and praise the singer.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

13. “TYPEWRITER SERIES #1950” BY TYLER KNOTT GREGSON

14. “IN THE METRO STATION” BY EZRA POUND

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:

Petals on a wet, black bough.

15. “SIREN SONG” BY MARGARET ATWOOD

This is the one song everyone

would like to learn: the song

that is irresistible:

the song that forces men

to leap overboard in squadrons

even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows

because anyone who has heard it

is dead, and the others can’t remember.

Shall I tell you the secret

and if I do, will you get me

out of this bird suit?

I don’t enjoy it here

squatting on this island

looking picturesque and mythical

with these two feathery maniacs,

I don’t enjoy singing

this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,

to you, only to you.

Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!

Only you, only you can,

you are unique

at last. Alas

it is a boring song

but it works every time.

16. “REAL SILENCE” BY ATTICUS

17. “YOU TOOK THE LAST BUS HOME” BY BRIAN BILSTON

you took the last bus home

don’t know how

you got it through the door

you’re always doing amazing stuff

like that time you caught a train

18. “VACATION” BY RITA DOVE

I love the hour before takeoff,

that stretch of no time, no home

but the gray vinyl seats linked like

unfolding paper dolls. Soon we shall

be summoned to the gate, soon enough

there’ll be the clumsy procedure of row numbers

and perforated stubs—but for now

I can look at these ragtag nuclear families

with their cooing and bickering

or the heeled bachelorette trying

to ignore a baby’s wail and the baby’s

exhausted mother waiting to be called up early

while the athlete, one monstrous hand

asleep on his duffel bag, listens,

perched like a seal trained for the plunge.

Even the lone executive

who has wandered this far into summer

with his lasered itinerary, briefcase

knocking his knees—even he

has worked for the pleasure of bearing

no more than a scrap of himself

into this hall. He’ll dine out, she’ll sleep late,

they’ll let the sun burn them happy all morning

—a little hope, a little whimsy

before the loudspeaker blurts

and we leap up to become

Flight 828, now boarding at Gate 17.

19. “THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS” BY ROBERT HAYDEN

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20. “FOG” BY CARL SANDBURG

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

21. “PERSEPHONE TO HADES” BY NIKITA GILL

22. “TULIPS” BY SYLVIA PLATH

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23. “IN THE HOSPITAL” BY CHEN CHEN

My mother was in the hospital & everyone wanted to be my friend.

But I was busy making a list: good dog, bad citizen, short

skeleton, tall mocha. Typical Tuesday.

My mother was in the hospital & no one wanted to be her friend.

Everyone wanted to be soft cooing sympathies. Very reasonable

pigeons. No one had the tie & our solution to it

was to buy shinier watches. We were enamored with

what our wrists could declare. My mother was in the hospital

& I didn’t want to be her friend. Typical son. Tall latte, short tale,

bad plot, great wifi in the atypical café. My mother was in the hospital

& she didn’t want to be her friend. She wanted to be the family

grocery list. Low-fat yogurt, firm tofu. She didn’t trust my father

to be it. You always forget something, she said, even when

I do the list for you. Even then.

24. “THE SNOW MAN” BY WALLACE STEVENS

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

25. “DIVING INTO THE WRECK” BY ADRIENNE RICH

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26. “STILL I RISE” BY MAYA ANGELOU

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

27. “AUTUMN” BY T.E. HULME

A touch of cold in the Autumn night—

I walked abroad,

And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge

Like a red-faced farmer.

I did not stop to speak, but nodded,

And round about were the wistful stars

With white faces like town children.

28. “THEORY OF MOTION (6), NOCTURNE” BY CAM AWKWARD-RICH

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29. “THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS” BY WENDELL BERRY

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

30. “TO THE DESERT” BY BENJAMIN ALIRE SÁENZ

I came to you one rainless August night.

You taught me how to live without the rain.

You are thirst and thirst is all I know.

You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky,

The hottest blue. You blow a breeze and brand

Your breath into my mouth. You reach—then bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

You wrap your name tight around my ribs

And keep me warm. I was born for you.

Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.

I wake to you at dawn. Never break your

Knot. Reach, rise, blow, Sálvame, mi dios,

Trágame, mi tierra. Salva, traga, Break me,

I am bread. I will be the water for your thirst.

31. “OVERHEARD ON THE TITANIC” BY AUSTIN KLEON

32. “HURRY” BY MARIE HOWE

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store

and the gas station and the green market and

Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,

as she runs along two or three steps behind me

her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.

Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?

To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?

Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,

Honey I’m sorry I keep saying Hurry—

you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.

And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking

back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,

hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.

33. “HOW TO TRIUMPH LIKE A GIRL” BY ADA LIMÓN

I like the lady horses best,

how they make it all look easy,

like running 40 miles per hour

is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.

I like their lady horse swagger,

after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!

But mainly, let’s be honest, I like

that they’re ladies. As if this big

dangerous animal is also a part of me,

that somewhere inside the delicate

skin of my body, there pumps

an 8-pound female horse heart,

giant with power, heavy with blood.

Don’t you want to believe it?

Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see

the huge beating genius machine

that thinks, no, it knows,

it’s going to come in first.

34. “OCD” BY NEIL HILBORN

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35. “KISSING IN VIETNAMESE” BY OCEAN VUONG

My grandmother kisses

as if bombs are bursting in the backyard,

where mint and jasmine lace their perfumes

through the kitchen window,

as if somewhere, a body is falling apart

and flames are making their way back

through the intricacies of a young boy’s thigh,

as if to walk out the door, your torso

would dance from exit wounds.

When my grandmother kisses, there would be

no flashy smooching, no western music

of pursed lips, she kisses as if to breathe

you inside her, nose pressed to cheek

so that your scent is relearned

and your sweat pearls into drops of gold

inside her lungs, as if while she holds you

death also, is clutching your wrist.

My grandmother kisses as if history

never ended, as if somewhere

a body is still

falling apart.

36. “QUILTS” BY NIKKI GIOVANNI

Like a fading piece of cloth

I am a failure

No longer do I cover tables filled with food and laughter

My seams are frayed my hems falling my strength no longer able

To hold the hot and cold

I wish for those first days

When just woven I could keep water

From seeping through

Repelled stains with the tightness of my weave

Dazzled the sunlight with my

Reflection

I grow old though pleased with my memories

The tasks I can no longer complete

Are balanced by the love of the tasks gone past

I offer no apology only

this plea:

When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end

Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt

That might keep some child warm

And some old person with no one else to talk to

Will hear my whispers

And

cuddle

near

37. “UNTITLED” BY PAVANA

38. “THE FIRST PERSON WHO WILL LIVE TO BE ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OLD HAS ALREADY BEEN BORN” BY NICOLE SEALEY

[For Petra]

Scientists say the average human

life gets three months longer every year.

By this math, death will be optional. Like a tie

or dessert or suffering. My mother asks

whether I’d want to live forever.

“I’d get bored,” I tell her. “But,” she says,

“there’s so much to do,” meaning

she believes there’s much she hasn’t done.

Thirty years ago she was the age I am now

but, unlike me, too industrious to think about

birds disappeared by rain. If only we had more

time or enough money to be kept on ice

until such a time science could bring us back.

Of late my mother has begun to think life

short-lived. I’m too young to convince her

otherwise. The one and only occasion

I was in the same room as the Mona Lisa,

it was encased in glass behind what I imagine

were velvet ropes. There’s far less between

ourselves and oblivion—skin that often defeats

its very purpose. Or maybe its purpose

isn’t protection at all, but rather to provide

a place, similar to a doctor’s waiting room,

in which to sit until our names are called.

Hold your questions until the end.

Mother, measure my wide-open arms—

we still have this much time to kill.

39. “HUDSON’S GEESE” BY LESLIE NORRIS

“… I have, from time to time,

related some incident of my boyhood,

and these are contained in various

chapters in The Naturalist in La

Plata, Birds and Man, Adventures

among Birds ….”

—W.H. Hudson, in Far Away And Long Ago

Hudson tells us of them,

the two migrating geese,

she hurt in the wing

indomitably walking

the length of a continent,

and he circling above

calling his distress.

They could not have lived.

Already I see her wing

scraped past the bone

as she drags it through rubble.

A fox, maybe, took her

in his snap jaws. And what

would he do, the point of his wheeling gone?

The wilderness of his cry

falling through an air

turned instantly to winter

would warn the guns of him.

If a fowler dropped him,

let it have been quick,

pellets hitting brain

and heart so his weight

came down senseless,

and nothing but his body

to enter the dog’s mouth.

40. “A SUPERMARKET IN CALIFORNIA” BY ALLEN GINSBERG

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41. “THE PROMISE” BY JANE HIRSCHFIELD

Stay, I said

to the cut flowers.

They bowed

their heads lower.

Stay, I said to the spider,

who fled.

Stay, leaf.

It reddened,

embarrassed for me and itself.

Stay, I said to my body.

It sat as a dog does,

obedient for a moment,

soon starting to tremble.

Stay, to the earth

of riverine valley meadows,

of fossiled escarpments,

of limestone and sandstone.

It looked back

with a changing expression, in silence.

Stay, I said to my loves.

Each answered,

Always.

42. “CHURCH” BY JACQUELINE WOODSON

On Sundays, the preacher gives everyone a chance

to repent their sins. Miss Edna makes me go

to church. She wears a bright hat

I wear my suit. Babies dress in lace.

Girls my age, some pretty, some not so

pretty. Old ladies and men nodding.

Miss Edna every now and then throwing her hand

in the air. Saying Yes, Lord and Preach!

I sneak a pen from my back pocket,

bend down low like I dropped something.

The chorus marches up behind the preacher

clapping and humming and getting ready to sing.

I write the word HOPE on my hand.

43. “SHAKE THE DUST” BY ANIS MOJGANI

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44.”ANGELS” BY MARY OLIVER

You might see an angel anytime

and anywhere. Of course you have

to open your eyes to a kind of

second level, but it’s not really

hard. The whole business of

what’s reality and what isn’t has

never been solved and probably

never will be. So I don’t care to

be too definite about anything.

I have a lot of edges called Perhaps

and almost nothing you can call

Certainty. For myself, but not

for other people. That’s a place

you just can’t get into, not

entirely anyway, other people’s

heads.

I’ll just leave you with this.

I don’t care how many angels can

dance on the head of a pin. It’s

enough to know that for some people

they exist, and that they dance.

45.”SAD AND ALONE” BY MAURICE MANNING

Well, this is nothing new, nothing

to rattle the rafters in the noggin,

this moment of remembering

and its kissing cousin the waking dream.

I wonder if I’ll remember it?

I’ve had a vision of a woman

reclining underneath a tree:

she’s about half naked and little by little

I’m sprinkling her burial mounds

with grass. This is the kind of work

I like. It lets me remember, and so

I do. I remember the time I laid

my homemade banjo in the fire

and let it burn. There was nothing else

to burn and the house was cold;

the cigar box curled inside the flames.

But the burst of heat was over soon,

and once the little roar was done,

I could hear the raindrops plopping up

the buckets and kettles, scattered out

like little ponds around the room.

It was night and I was a boy, alone

and left to listen to that old music.

I liked it. I’ve liked it ever since.

I loved the helpless people I loved.

That’s what a little boy will do,

but a grown man will turn it all

to sadness and let it soak his heart

until he wrings it out and dreams

about another kind of love,

some afternoon beneath a tree.

Burial mounds—that’s hilarious.

46. “AMONG THE STARS” BY LANG LEAV

48. “THANK YOU” BY ROSS GAY

If you find yourself half naked

and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,

again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says

you are the air of the now and gone, that says

all you love will turn to dust,

and will meet you there, do not

raise your fist. Do not raise

your small voice against it. And do not

take cover. Instead, curl your toes

into the grass, watch the cloud

ascending from your lips. Walk

through the garden’s dormant splendor.

Say only, thank you.

Thank you.

49. “THEORIES OF TIME AND SPACE” BY NATASHA TRETHEWEY

You can get there from here, though

there’s no going home.

Everywhere you go will be somewhere

you’ve never been.