Prosody, or the art of versification can be considered as one of the oldest and most prolific field of studies. From its English origins, back in the 16th century, poets and prosodists have tried to define systems in order to describe the metrical formulas used by poets of all times in their work. This paper focuses on the prosodic proposals made by William Carlos Williams and Charles Olson during the late forties in order to explain the particular features of free verse. Their ideas caused a great influence on the work of younger artists such as A.R.Ammons who produced a book of poems in 1965 entitled Corsons Inlet where he consciously applies some of the most original principles of the open field prosodies. The poem that provides the title to the book is a clear example of the multiple possibilities of those prosodic approaches explained in their essays by Williams ("Poetry as a Field of Action", 1949) and Olson ("Projective Verse",1950).
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