I don't know what kind of basic skills you'd acquire by giving up on rhyme and meter. Those ARE the basic skills. Start there. If you can master rhyme and meter, then you can write free verse. If all you can do is write free verse, all you can do is spill your guts on a page. That's not poetry.
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@blockurator,
You make a good point. There are actually Free Verse poems that I like (don't tell anyone ... I have a reputation to protect) and in every single case, the poet's knowledge of traditional poetic techniques was obvious. The poet was not writing Free Verse because they had to (couldn't write Verse), but because they chose to.
I have a dozen or so Quillisms that I've coined over the years that I've tried, a million times, to set to Verse ... but they always get butchered in the process. And so, quietly (in a dark room), I once crafted a few into Free Verse.
I've never published any of them as doing so would entail my having to eat a 1,000 tons of crow ... but who knows ... perhaps some day. :-)
Quill
Traitor!