Control and Technique; A Study of A History of Free Verse and Eliot’s ‘Prufrock’

“There is a great deal, in the writing of poetry, which must be conscious and deliberate.” 

– T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”

The argument against free verse is that there is no such poetry that is worth reading and writing that is without poetic technique. Eliot himself argued, in 1917, that “Vers libre does not exist” (To Criticize 183) and, twenty-five years later, “no verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job” (On Poets 31). Yet, here is the leading man of free verse poetry in the Modern era. There are systematic deviations on what free verse is, and this paper will conclude that Eliot is the prime example for what free verse truly is.

Free verse is not to be disenfranchised by the understanding that there is no form. Chris Beyers, assistant professor of literature, composition, and poetry at Assumption College in Massachusetts, writes in his historicist book A History of Free Verse, “Though the artist is controlled to some degree by his material, the work of art is not growing out of some inner source of energy; instead, it is shaped by the conscious activity of the artist” (54). Whether the piece of art is sentimental or “of the heart”, as poetry is commonly understood to be, the organicism of the piece is still controlled. While there is no regular form to Eliot’s poetry, there are still direct techniques that are within the history of poetry, and more exceptionally, of his and his contemporaries' creation. A. R. Jones, writing in Critical Survey, explains the power of repetition in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, where Eliot creates

a verbal, textual unity based on constantly recurring words, phrases and images and that these bind the poem together. This constant repetition also gives an overwhelming impression of a mind imprisoned, trapped within itself and within the mesh of language. The poem articulates inadequacy, and, like the fog and smoke that isolates Prufrock’s world, his language also conceals him from reality. It is in this verbal patterning that we can most clearly see how technique and subject, form and content, are indivisible. (219)

The control that Eliot displays is evident being the premier poet of his time. The haunting of meter, the haunting of form, the haunting of traditional poetic techniques (such as rhyme) are all evident throughout Eliot’s canon. What Eliot disgraces is the perception that poetry is the regurgitation of heavy emotion and sentimentality. He states in his 1919 essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent”,  “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things” (Egoist 73). Hence, we have an echo chamber of poetic ideas and personal notions that resonate until the frequency is written on to a page. The ‘escape’ is the act of writing itself. The poet, calling upon his poetic idols, his historic breadth, and his dedication to craft curates an expression of the world before us. What we are left with is free verse. There is nothing loose, or rather, ‘free’, about it. Poetry is a system of control, and the handbook is the poets before us. The great ones, like Thomas Stearns Eliot, write in their own pages. Let’s not forget though that he, too, was inspired by the poets before him. As he carried on traditions then created his own, we do the same within our own practice of the poetic genre that is free verse.

Works Cited

Beyers, Chris. A History of Free Verse. University of Arkansas Press, 2017. 

Eliot, T. S. On Poets and Poetry. London: Faber and Faber, 1957.

Eliot, T. S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The Poetry Foundation, 15 Aug. 2024, www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock.

Eliot, T. S. To Criticize the Critic. New York: Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, 1965.

Eliot, T. S. 1919. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” The Egoist, vol. 6, nos. 4&5, pp. 54–73.

Jones, A. R. “Prufrock Revisited.” Critical Survey, vol. 3, no. 4, 1968, pp. 215–23. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41549304. Accessed 26 Mar. 2025.