T.S. Eliot on free verse

He stated in "Reflections On Vers Libre" -

"The most interesting verse which has yet been written in our language has been done by taking a simple form, like iambic pentameter, and constantly withdrawing from it, or taking no form at all, and constantly approximating a very simple one. It is the contrast between fixity and flux, this unperceived evasion of monotony, which is the very life of verse".

Of course he also said that there was no such thing as absolutely free verse.

What do you think of his statement above?

I have no problem trying to do either, the problem is doing them well.

Chris Beyers in "A History of Free Verse", says -

"Though Eliot's explanation does not explain all of free verse, it does a good job with his own. Consider these lines from "J.Alfred Prufrock":

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
the muttering retreats
of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
of sawdust restaurants with oyster shells:
with streets that follow like a tedious argument
of insidious intent

The poet Harriet Monroe argued that "free-verse movement has been essentially a plea for personal rhythm, for the poet's independence in working out his most expressive form and using it with out prejudice".

Coleridge distinguishes between "mechanic" and "organic" form -

"The form is mechanic when on any given material we impress a pre-determined form, not necessarily arising out of the properties of the material, as when to a mass of wet clay we give whatever shape we wish it to retain when hardened. The organic form, on the other hand, is innate; it shapes as it develops itself from within, and the fullness of its development is one and the same with perfection of its outward form. Such is the life, such the form."

When, some time ago, I began to interest myself in the writing of poetry, I did so by using a form from a poet I admired. This was good practice. Soon I begin to see that my words, thoughts, images and inspirations, would seldom fit the form and when I forced them to it, the result was wooden at best.

Sometimes I still start with a form I like, but soon let my inspirations mold the poem into a form of its own.