Great Regulars: "I think very few people can manage free verse,"

wrote the poet W. H. Auden. "You need an infallible ear, like D. H. Lawrence, to determine where the lines should end." How true. Knowing where to end the line is, in fact, one of the most crucial elements for writing poetry without the use of an established metrical pattern.

Formal verse has its own inherent challenges, of course, but when you are writing in the common metrical form of iambic pentameter, for example, you at least know where to stop the line.

from Anthony Maulucci: Norwich Bulletin: On Poetry: Managing free verse can be difficult without control

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