The origins of free verse

http://www.webexhibits.org/poetry/explore_famous_free_background.html

“Modern interpretations.

The promise of irregular cadence continued to beckon unconventional and narrative poets, and began appearing as vers libre in the 19th century French poetry of Jules Laforgue and Gustave Kant. Germany’s Johann Wolfgang von Goethe also experimented with free verse. By the latter half of the century, Walt Whitman had mastered the form, and bards such as Christina Rosetti, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Baudelaire, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and W.E. Henley were writing free verse. Still, it wasn’t until Richard Aldington used the term “free verse” in a 1915 anthology introduction that the form took an English name.

Yet, as T.S. Eliot warned, “No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job.” While free verse is irregular, lyrical, and unmeasured by line counts and stanzas, metrical and rhythmic precision remain just as vital as in other poetic forms.”