How free can free verse be?

This question has been bugging me for years, and now that I'm starting to experiment with poetry, I hope you guys can help me and clarify something for me.

poems that don't rhyme and follow certain structures are free verse, right? how "free" can a free verse be and still be called poetry? Recently, I came across something that just looks like a passage from a first person novel that has been cut up into short lines, yet that is a poem.

I'm really confused.

any help is appreciated. Thanks.

I can help you,we can talk on this

No that much problematic

"Recently, I came across something that just looks like a passage from a first person novel that has been cut up into short lines, yet that is a poem."

In these cases there's often emphasis placed on specific wording and the placement of the lines, rather than on rhyme, meter, etc. The author had an idea, and thought that it would be better conveyed in an almost prose-like flow, but with the phrases set in this form, to highlight its parts.

I think that was a really complicated way of me trying to say something simple, but I don't know how to say it more simply than that. I hope you get what I mean. ; )

Often, it becomes poetry when the poet decides to make it poetry.

It is free verse but it depends because it could be clear prose not verse.

I agree with Sibyllene

I write free verse, well at least that's what I thought lol. It's not as much structure but more rhyming, kind of like rap. But I'm not 100 percent positive.

I write free verse and a lot of the time come back and redo the parts that I want. The first product is never the same as the last product.

I free association write as well, I just put a pen to a pad and write whatever my hand writes. Prose...well, I consider it to be just talking. I also don't consider it to be a poetry form though many will still debate that.

I enjoy structure and well organized poems *shrugs* I mean Syl. is right.

Sibyllene had the best answer, I think. Pretty much any writing that's cut up with line breaks can be considered poetry... that doesn't mean it's good poetry, of course. I prefer poetry that is "poetic," that is, poetry that employs precise diction, unusual syntax and phraseology, and other literary techniques in abundance.