I recently got this message in my email from someone named Matthew.
In my experience, if you rhyme in a poem, no one takes you seriously. I don't understand these brainwashed people.
Are we to believe there are no more Poe's, or Frost's, or Shakespeare's, or all kinds of great poets throughout the centuries?
A good lyrical poem is very hard to come by, but that does not mean they don't exist?
I have a difficult time believing that "real critics" take any NEW lyrical, rhyming poems seriously. I would need proof to feel differently.
I wrote a response:
Dear Matthew: In your note to me you seem to be either frustrated or upset. I think you are when you say that many people do not take your work seriously if it rhymes. I am not sure it is fair to brand all of those people as “brainwashed.” When a majority of people accept something it may mean that they are just going along with the majority, they are on the bandwagon, in step. racing toward a cliff like a bunch of lemmings. But any label applied to a large group is usually a prejudice. Some of those people who prefer “free verse” may just prefer it for some reason.
Are good rhyming poems being written today? Yes. Are there recognized contemporary poets using rhyme today? Yes.
One mistake some people make is assuming that because a poem is called Free Verse that it is free from rhyme. End rhyme is often missing, or used only occasionally, but internal rhyme may actually be used with abundance. Free Verse often makes use of many traditionally accepted poetic techniques.
I continue to think about rhyme even after responding to Matthew. I remember a couple of lines by Theodore Roethke:
I am the final thing
A man learning to sing.
I remember reading A Precocious Autobiography by Yevgeny Yevtushenko in which the Russian poet said that he wrote his verse using rhyme because he liked the verse to sing.
When Robert Frost said that free verse was like playing tennis with the net down he was speaking to the challenges that come with fixed form poetry and the writing within the parameters of the fixed form has an aspect of fun attached to it.
Nevertheless, if you scan Poet’s Market you will see, over and over, literary magazine editors saying they do not want to receive any rhyming poetry. Why is rhyme less of a factor in most contemporary poetry, or poetry deemed by most as serious poetry?
Rhyme Driven
Sometimes you will see a criticism of a rhyming poem that it is “rhyme driven.” What does that mean? Well, if a poem is rhyme driven it means that the line is heading for the next rhyme. The trip matters less than arriving at that perfect rhyme at the end of the line. When the whole reason for the poem is to reach the rhymes, that poem is rhyme driven.
Poets using rhyme came to realize that they were sometimes prevented from saying what they want to say, because the rhymes were not there. If they establish a pattern of rhyme and want to stay consistent with that pattern they end up not saying what they originally intended to say. Or if they say what they wanted to say they had to torture the syntax. A line may be considered tortured, if there is even the slightest whiff of odd word order. Consider one of the great poems of American literature. Let’s look at the opening two lines from Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost:
Whose woods these are, I think I know
His house is in the village though
Wouldn’t we normally say:
I think I know who owns these woods
It is very common for the word order to alter in order to force the line to rhyme. But word order alterations are also used by free verse poets. Take for example the opening two lines from former Poet Laureate William Stafford’s powerful poem, Traveling Through The Dark:
Traveling through the dark I found a deer
In my experience, if you rhyme in a poem, no one takes you seriously. I don't understand these brainwashed people.
Are we to believe there are no more Poe's, or Frost's, or Shakespeare's, or all kinds of great poets throughout the centuries?
A good lyrical poem is very hard to come by, but that does not mean they don't exist?
I have a difficult time believing that "real critics" take any NEW lyrical, rhyming poems seriously. I would need proof to feel differently.
I wrote a response:
Dear Matthew: In your note to me you seem to be either frustrated or upset. I think you are when you say that many people do not take your work seriously if it rhymes. I am not sure it is fair to brand all of those people as “brainwashed.” When a majority of people accept something it may mean that they are just going along with the majority, they are on the bandwagon, in step. racing toward a cliff like a bunch of lemmings. But any label applied to a large group is usually a prejudice. Some of those people who prefer “free verse” may just prefer it for some reason.
Are good rhyming poems being written today? Yes. Are there recognized contemporary poets using rhyme today? Yes.
One mistake some people make is assuming that because a poem is called Free Verse that it is free from rhyme. End rhyme is often missing, or used only occasionally, but internal rhyme may actually be used with abundance. Free Verse often makes use of many traditionally accepted poetic techniques.
I continue to think about rhyme even after responding to Matthew. I remember a couple of lines by Theodore Roethke:
I am the final thing
A man learning to sing.
I remember reading A Precocious Autobiography by Yevgeny Yevtushenko in which the Russian poet said that he wrote his verse using rhyme because he liked the verse to sing.
When Robert Frost said that free verse was like playing tennis with the net down he was speaking to the challenges that come with fixed form poetry and the writing within the parameters of the fixed form has an aspect of fun attached to it.
Nevertheless, if you scan Poet’s Market you will see, over and over, literary magazine editors saying they do not want to receive any rhyming poetry. Why is rhyme less of a factor in most contemporary poetry, or poetry deemed by most as serious poetry?
Rhyme Driven
Sometimes you will see a criticism of a rhyming poem that it is “rhyme driven.” What does that mean? Well, if a poem is rhyme driven it means that the line is heading for the next rhyme. The trip matters less than arriving at that perfect rhyme at the end of the line. When the whole reason for the poem is to reach the rhymes, that poem is rhyme driven.
Poets using rhyme came to realize that they were sometimes prevented from saying what they want to say, because the rhymes were not there. If they establish a pattern of rhyme and want to stay consistent with that pattern they end up not saying what they originally intended to say. Or if they say what they wanted to say they had to torture the syntax. A line may be considered tortured, if there is even the slightest whiff of odd word order. Consider one of the great poems of American literature. Let’s look at the opening two lines from Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost:
Whose woods these are, I think I know
His house is in the village though
Wouldn’t we normally say:
I think I know who owns these woods
It is very common for the word order to alter in order to force the line to rhyme. But word order alterations are also used by free verse poets. Take for example the opening two lines from former Poet Laureate William Stafford’s powerful poem, Traveling Through The Dark:
Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
In this free verse example the natural order of the words is clearly altered. Most of us would say,
Driving through the darkness I found a dead
deer on the edge of the Wilson River road
Most of us would call driving driving and not traveling. Most of us would say we came upon a dead deer not a deer dead.
In the Frost poem the word order is altered to make the rhymes fit, and they do fit very well. In the Stafford poem the word order is altered to simulate that slight surprise you get when you come upon something dead. The first line ends with deer, and the beginning of line two is dead. The altered word order, and by separating the words on different lines gives you a tiny unexpected shock.
Am I saying that altering the natural word order is bad when it is done for rhyme and acceptable when it is done in free verse for some intended effect?
Well, no. I love both the Frost poem and the Stafford poem. Poetry is not natural. Poetry is not the same thing as natural conversation. I think we want our poems to elevate language. We want poetry to have a density to it. In a poem we want, at least sometimes we want, levels of meaning. We like the words to have multiple meanings and all (or most) of these different meanings to apply to the meaning of the poem.
All poetry alters the natural way of using the language, but better poetry tends to alter or manipulate the words without having that alteration stand out. We don’t seem to like it as well if the alterations of the phrases and sentences call attention to themselves.
Rhyming Nouns
In this free verse example the natural order of the words is clearly altered. Most of us would say,
Driving through the darkness I found a dead
deer on the edge of the Wilson River road
Most of us would call driving driving and not traveling. Most of us would say we came upon a dead deer not a deer dead.
In the Frost poem the word order is altered to make the rhymes fit, and they do fit very well. In the Stafford poem the word order is altered to simulate that slight surprise you get when you come upon something dead. The first line ends with deer, and the beginning of line two is dead. The altered word order, and by separating the words on different lines gives you a tiny unexpected shock.
Am I saying that altering the natural word order is bad when it is done for rhyme and acceptable when it is done in free verse for some intended effect?
Well, no. I love both the Frost poem and the Stafford poem. Poetry is not natural. Poetry is not the same thing as natural conversation. I think we want our poems to elevate language. We want poetry to have a density to it. In a poem we want, at least sometimes we want, levels of meaning. We like the words to have multiple meanings and all (or most) of these different meanings to apply to the meaning of the poem.
All poetry alters the natural way of using the language, but better poetry tends to alter or manipulate the words without having that alteration stand out. We don’t seem to like it as well if the alterations of the phrases and sentences call attention to themselves.
Rhyming Nouns
In some inflected languages (like Italian) where the word endings change based upon their grammatical usage, you are just going to find oodles and gobs of rhymes. Translating these rhyming poems into English and matching the rhyme scheme can be difficult and sometimes impossible. In English we have a problem of having fewer rhyming words, and so we end up rhyming a bunch of nouns together (boy, joy, annoy) which tends to force us to put our rhymes at the end of each line. So you are reading the poem, and you are coming to a near full stop at the end of each line. This pause at the end of each line causes the poem to have a sign-song, nursery rhyme quality to even a serious work.
Take this corny, just made up example:
Standing by her grave I sigh
and wonder why she had to die
the driver he was young and drunk
a careless no good stupid punk
and now she rests beneath the sod
and I stand here questioning my God.
I intended the subject matter to be serious, but obviously the lines come to a full stop and there is the rhyme waiting and obviously a noun. It just doesn’t have the effect on a reader that the subject matter would have sought.
Enjambment
Enjambment means that the sentence moves on to the next line with little or no pause at the line’s end. In English, while rhymes are less frequent, we do have words that pair up when we look for other parts of speech. A noun might rhyme with a participle, or a verb with a pronoun, or an adjective with a preposition. This provides some interesting possibilities, and it tends to move the poem along forcing the reader to read past the end of the line without stopping to saver the rhyme.
Consider the Keats poem: Endymion (a poem, like Chaucer's, in iambic pentameter rhyming couplets) which demonstrate how enjambment works:
A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and asleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.(ll .1-5)
In line 2 we end with the words will never and that is a stand alone phrase. The mind is asking, “never what?” The whole phrase, will never pass. The word never is an adverb. By mixing things up and rhyming nouns and using adverbs, prepositions, nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives and nouns to rhyme with one another you get lines that flow. You avoid lines that end with a big stop while the rhyme yells out “look at me.”
In line 2 we end with the words will never and that is a stand alone phrase. The mind is asking, “never what?” The whole phrase, will never pass. The word never is an adverb. By mixing things up and rhyming nouns and using adverbs, prepositions, nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives and nouns to rhyme with one another you get lines that flow. You avoid lines that end with a big stop while the rhyme yells out “look at me.”
AS for me, I both agree and disagree. I don’t enjoy serious poetry that sounds forced, and trivialized by its use of rhyme. One of the more comman creative forms using rhyme today is rap lyrics. In one rap by Eminem the writer/performer attempts to tell a serious story about his marriage and his feelings for his child. Here is a short exerpt from one of Eminem’s songs.
I keep having this dream, I'm pushin' Hailie on the swing
She keeps screaming, she don't want me to sing
"You're making Mommy cry, why? Why is Mommy crying?
"Baby, Daddy ain't leaving no more, "Daddy you're lying"
You always say that, you always say this is the last time"
But you ain't leaving no more, Daddy you're mine"
She's piling boxes in front of the door trying to block it"
Daddy please, Daddy don't leave, Daddy - no stop it!"
When I'm Gone by Eminem
This is an autobiographical work, and it is serious. The lyrics go on to describe a performer who is tortured by guilt for being “on the road” and away from his child. The lyrics include the attempted suicide of his exwife, and the turmoil of his daughter’s life. This is a serious work, but it doesn’t work as a poem. Just reading the words seems to trivialize the content.
Now it is not fair to take a song lyric or a rap lyric and expect it to stand alone as a work of poetry. Some song lyrics can stand alone, but usually the lyric is central to the music it was designed for, and what might not work with words alone, may work out perfectly when accompanied by music.
So let’s look at serious rhyming poetry by famous and admired writers.
First look at an excerpt from Longfellow’s poem The Wreck of the Hesperus:
The skipper he stood beside the helm,
When I'm Gone by Eminem
This is an autobiographical work, and it is serious. The lyrics go on to describe a performer who is tortured by guilt for being “on the road” and away from his child. The lyrics include the attempted suicide of his exwife, and the turmoil of his daughter’s life. This is a serious work, but it doesn’t work as a poem. Just reading the words seems to trivialize the content.
Now it is not fair to take a song lyric or a rap lyric and expect it to stand alone as a work of poetry. Some song lyrics can stand alone, but usually the lyric is central to the music it was designed for, and what might not work with words alone, may work out perfectly when accompanied by music.
So let’s look at serious rhyming poetry by famous and admired writers.
First look at an excerpt from Longfellow’s poem The Wreck of the Hesperus:
The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now South.
.
Then up and spake an old Sailòr,
Had sailed to the Spanish Main,
"I pray thee, put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.
"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!"
The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.
The Wreck of the Hesperus By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
No one can deny that a ship sung in a hurricane is a serious topic, especially for the sailors that died and the grieving family members left behind, but this poem just seems silly to me. Notice that all the rhymes are either nouns or pronouns.
Let’s check out The Man He Killed by Thomas Hardy. Thomas Hardy’s fiction is very powerful even for today’s readers, and he is clearly a skilled poet. In this poem the speaker is contemplating a man killed on the battle field, and noting that under different circumstances the man he killed might have easily turned into a pal, a nice guy he would be happy to share a beer with, but because of war things turned out very differently.
The Wreck of the Hesperus By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
No one can deny that a ship sung in a hurricane is a serious topic, especially for the sailors that died and the grieving family members left behind, but this poem just seems silly to me. Notice that all the rhymes are either nouns or pronouns.
Let’s check out The Man He Killed by Thomas Hardy. Thomas Hardy’s fiction is very powerful even for today’s readers, and he is clearly a skilled poet. In this poem the speaker is contemplating a man killed on the battle field, and noting that under different circumstances the man he killed might have easily turned into a pal, a nice guy he would be happy to share a beer with, but because of war things turned out very differently.
I shot him dead because--
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although
The Man he Killed by Thomas Hardy
Write What you Want The Way You Want
Does all this mean that a serious poet can only use rhyme for satire, humor, and children’s poetry, but never for serious works? Can we never again have a Robert Frost style poet recognized and admired by the masses?
I don’t know. I like to think that a great work of poetry, or a great work of any sort of art, will be recognized by the world. I fear this is just something I want. I believe there are great writers, and artists everywhere, and they gain fame and admiration because they work hard for it, and they get lucky. I believe there are fabulous artists who may be admired by a small group, but once they die their art fades into oblivion. Really, it is the nature of existence that we all eventually fade into oblivion. There will be a time when no one remembers Shakespeare. Of course this may not happen until all human beings have been wiped off the earth, but the conclusion of life on earth is to die and this planet will become a spinning ball of dust similar to Mars. Oblivion comes to us all; it is just a matter of timing. If oblivion is unavoidable, then why not write what you like, and write it the way you want to write it. Creativity is interesting and almost exclusively the purview of human beings. When we create we celebrate human life, all life and our place within all that exists.
The Man he Killed by Thomas Hardy
Write What you Want The Way You Want
Does all this mean that a serious poet can only use rhyme for satire, humor, and children’s poetry, but never for serious works? Can we never again have a Robert Frost style poet recognized and admired by the masses?
I don’t know. I like to think that a great work of poetry, or a great work of any sort of art, will be recognized by the world. I fear this is just something I want. I believe there are great writers, and artists everywhere, and they gain fame and admiration because they work hard for it, and they get lucky. I believe there are fabulous artists who may be admired by a small group, but once they die their art fades into oblivion. Really, it is the nature of existence that we all eventually fade into oblivion. There will be a time when no one remembers Shakespeare. Of course this may not happen until all human beings have been wiped off the earth, but the conclusion of life on earth is to die and this planet will become a spinning ball of dust similar to Mars. Oblivion comes to us all; it is just a matter of timing. If oblivion is unavoidable, then why not write what you like, and write it the way you want to write it. Creativity is interesting and almost exclusively the purview of human beings. When we create we celebrate human life, all life and our place within all that exists.
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