The poem has been the subject of keen debate — what does the image represent, if anything? Why does so much depend on the red wheelbarrow? Is the poem meant to represent the salience of everyday images and/or lived experience in general? Or something else? Here, the empty space is arguably as important as the words that are actually there — what is being left unsaid by the poem’s sparse, meditative, economical free verse?
The poetry of Williams and other imagists is at the minimalist end of the free verse spectrum, but it is important to stress that free verse does not have to be minimalist. As Wainwright argues, the poetry of Frank O’Hara (1926–1966) is a later example of free verse in a maximalist, expansionist mode: “[O’Hara] shares the modernist fear of the pretentiously ‘poetic’, but rather than trying to pare it away he seeks to bury it by being talkative and exuberant” (2015). Wainwright highlights poems such as “Les Luths,” appearing in 1965’s Love Poems (Tentative Title), which thrums with O’Hara’s witty everyday language while, at the same time, reflecting on that most traditional and serious of poetic subjects: love.
Criticism of free verse
Is free verse truly free, or does it simply work under a different set of constraints? Bradford points out that “Even those poets who reject rhyme and meter retain in free verse the unit that is the distinctive feature of poems: the poetic line” (2010). As well as the poetic line, poets (arguably) still have to consider such matters as stress, language choice, and rhythm in order to achieve the effects they want. As T.S. Eliot noted, “No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job” (quoted by Charles O. Hartman in Verse, 2015).
It could be argued, then, that the effective and powerful use of the English language requires some kind of restriction on its use — that no well-crafted poetry can ever be truly free. In a similar vein to T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost famously compared free verse to playing tennis without a net (W.M. Thomas Hill, “Sandburg, Carl,” in The Robert Frost Encyclopedia, 2000).
Some poets might argue, though, that such apparent restrictions as “the poetic line” are actually, in their own way, liberating; freeing their poetry to more accurately mimic the chaos of human thought in a way that is not possible with prose, and opening up new imaginative avenues. Together with the freedom to ignore meter and rhyme, free verse (though still following the poetic line) may arguably be seen as the most liberating form of expression.
While some argue that the rules of traditional poetic form are necessary in order to produce effective poetry, others argue that such constraints hold poetry back — that free verse releases poetry’s full creative potential. Wainwright, for example, makes the case that “Free verse of course does not do away with rhythm. What it does do is bring in the opportunity for very particular, intuitive variation, Blake’s ‘variety in every line’” (2015).
Closing thoughts: free verse today
Wherever you might stand on the free verse debate, there is no arguing with its influential legacy. Free verse has been the most popular form of poetry since the 20th century — eclipsing previous historical titans such as blank verse, and employed by popular poets such as Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) and Maya Angelou (1928–2014). Free verse continues to flourish today, all across the world. As Richard Andrews argues,