The Sheer Ubiquitousness...

[dukealien]

Take a super structure, standard sonnet, cut off some beats here, add some beat there, change rhymes to intentionally not rhyme and it essentially reads like free verse.  Only maybe twice as much work went in, and it still probably reads like crap.

Not that I'm seeking 'confirmation bias'... but just watching Biden's inauguration and listened to Amanda Gorman (essentially the US's first poet laureate.) Yes, it had a rap beat (wasn't expecting that), but impressively read and moving.

Hmm. Confused [dot] com.

Thanks for replying. Still researching. 

The old saw is, blank verse is tennis without the net; free verse is tennis without the ball.  But follow that thought a bit:  tennis without the ball can be terrific if the "players" make all the moves (perhaps with "whop" and "boink" sound effects), then get into a heated argument over a disputed (imagined) line call.  It takes a lot more for free verse (I'm still rubbish at it quite often) and knowing all the rules of forms, rhyme, etc. without ostensibly following them.  Air tennis is vey easy - much easier than tennis with net and ball - to do badly, but when it's done well it's a higher art where whacking balls over the net is just sport (like flawless iambic pentameter with decent rhymes that just doesn't sing).

Hope that helps your research