On the Rhythm of New Free Verses

The intrinsic emotional rhythm of modern free verses must be expressed by means of the external rhythm of language. This is because language is the homeland of their existence as far as verses are concerned. The language rhythm of modern free verses discards the ready-made rhythm. Instead, a verse itself becomes part of the rhythm and the variation in the length of the lines of the verse forms a certain rhythm. The modern free verses in the hundred years of their creation fall into three types including reading style, lyric style and prose style. The representative poets were Dai Wang-shu, Guo Mo-ruo, Ai Qing respectively. On the basis of practice, a summarization is made that there exist two problems of the modern free verses. First, the basic principle is the equivalence principle of line arrangement. Second, the specific respects are reflected in verse group combination, a combination of verse, rhyme arrangements, and verse construction.