French alexandrine can be dated exactly: 1886; in this year, editor Gustave Kahn published several seminal ' poems in his review ', including poems by Arthur Rimbaud (written over a decade previously) and Jules Laforgue, with more following in the next years. ' shed all metrical and prosodic constraints, such as verse length, rhyme, and caesura; Laforgue said, "I forget to rhyme, I forget about the number of syllables, I forget about stanzaic structure." French alexandrine The French alexandrine () is a syllabic poetic meter of (nominally and typically) 12 syllables with a medial caesura dividing the line into two hemistichs (half-lines)
French alexandrine target; they also cultivated the use of ' — lines with an odd, rather than even, number of syllables. These uneven lines, though known from earlier French verse, were relatively uncommon and helped suggest a new rhythmic register. ' is the source of the English term free verse, and is effectively identical in meaning. It can be seen as a radical extension of the tendencies of both ' (various and unpredictable line lengths) and ' (weakening of strictures for caesura and rhymes, as well as experimentation with unusual line lengths). Its birth — for the reading public at least —