‖ vers libre
(vɛr libr)
Pl. vers libres.
[Fr., free verse.]
Poetic writing in which the traditional rules of prosody, esp. those of metre and rhyme, are disregarded in favour of variable rhythms and line lengths; a composition in this style; = free verse s.v. free a. D. 2.
| 1902 Encycl. Brit. XXVIII. 497/2 M. Vielé-Griffin..and M. Gustave Kahn..gave us vers libres which, but for their typographical arrangement, are indistinguishable from prose. 1912 Poetry I. ii. 65 Mr. Richard Aldington is a young English poet, one of the ‘Imagistes’, a group of ardent Hellenists who are pursuing interesting experiments in vers libre. 1920 Glasgow Herald 8 July 4/2 Mr. Bunker..is most interesting in his vers-libres; unfortunately they are not poetry, though happily free of the pretentiousness of most vers-librists. 1928 T. S. Eliot in E. Pound Sel. Poems p. viii, I remarked some years ago, in speaking of vers libre, that ‘no vers is libre for the man who wants to do a good job’. The term, which fifty years ago had an exact meaning, in relation to the French alexandrine, now means too much to mean anything at all. 1937 W. Inge Modernism in Lit. 13, I have no doubt that cubism and futurism and most of vers libre will soon pass into limbo. 1955 C. Carrington Rudyard Kipling xiv. 352 Kipling..experimented in almost every conventional verse-form, and wrote remarkably successful vers libres. 1978 Times Lit. Suppl. 1 Dec. 1406/3 His was..a phrased rather than a cadenced poetry. His rhythmic strategy meant that he retained the option of vers libre, the thematic resources of dream, and the technical resources of modernism. |
Hence vers-ˈlibrist(e (also -libre-ist and as one word without hyphen), a writer of vers libre.
| 1916 Independent LXXXVIII. 104/3 If the public can be convinced that the vers libristes have something to say worth attention, it will have more sympathy. 1926 British Weekly 21 Jan. 395/2 Vers-libre-ists are in poetry very much what the futurists were in art, rebels against the established order. 1957 Archivum Linguisticum IX. 142 Certain vers-libristes of the Symbolist movement. 1969 J. Gross Rise & Fall Man of Lett. viii. 229 By 1911 Ezra Pound was a regular contributor, the verslibrists were arguing their case, Imagism was already in the air. 1981 N. & Q. Dec. 571/2 Whether one should see in the experiments of modern vers-libristes a fusion of the two systems..must remain a matter for individual response. |