Shakespeare is the best partially because he operated in a world of forms. Rhymes, rhythms, syntax, length...everything had to fit into this context, and within this framework he still expressed. His poems are musical because like music he has a finite number of notes, certain keys...

I do not operate in that world of forms. I operate with free verse.

Forms make me a better poet, but they are not my specialty.

It really takes more than mere practice, but the reason forms help so much is because they force you into wordplay, into understanding how you structure things, they teach you how to dance around words, to taste on your tongue the movement, feel the cadence as it drips by.

It's not just sonnets. Sestinas, haiku, limericks...being given a box and transforming it. A canvas has edges, a finite space to create in. Master painters work within a frame. Master poets do the same.

A bedroom is YOUR room when you express yourself within the confines of that room: a picture here, books there, stuffed animals...repaint the walls blue and gold or black and pink! But if you had no walls, no ceiling, you could not make it your own. It would merely stretch endlessly.

This is the service of forms to the free verse poet. It makes poetry your own canvas, your own limits, your own expression.