It is no secret that I detest poems that do not rhyme and have no fixed verse. Free rhyme and free verse have been abused so much in modern poetry that I automatically write off poems in free rhyme and free verse. Too many people use free rhyme and free verse to justify their rubbish as poetry. It’s like folk who call every picture of food, including half melted ice cream on soggy waffles, food porn.
(Incidentally, people should stop using the word food porn so much. Not every picture of a person is porn, not every picture of food is food porn.)
So back to poetry and away from food.
I respect poems that rhyme because it’s not easy to find words that convey the meaning you want, that sound alike. It’s OK, I guess, if all your words rhyme with or end with “ing.” But then that’s lousy rhyming. And your poem will look like a mess of verbs. Your rhymes have to be varied. You can re-use the same rhyme, but not for 50% of hte poem.
If you write a poem, please make it rhyme. At the very least, eye-rhyme it. I know eye-rhymes are a lazy way of rhyming, but put in the effort. Shakespeare made entire plays rhyme. Surely you can make it rhyme too.
It’s not just rhyming that is necessary. It has to rhyme properly. In other words, don’t chuck a random word that rhymes but doesn’t support or add to the meaning of your poem! Negative example ahead.
He was an old man who was very strange,
Who spoke in rhyme and never said orange.
If you bring up something about oranges later in the poem, fine. But if you never mention orange again, I will take your poem and throw it in bowels of the abysmal language swill-eater. Make that rhyme mean something. Otherwise, find something else to say, use a thesaurus, or banish the thought of being a poet from your mind.
Verse is also important. When in doubt, default to iambic pentameter. Five sets of stress/unstress. I cannot stress (haha) this enough. Your poem is a pile of turd if there is no rhythm to it.
It’s not to say you have to have fixed rhythm, or you cannot have run-on lines or enjambment or all those other fancy poetic devices. You can. But they are meant to be special, to highlight certain key elements that you like. And they won’t be special if the rest of your poem doesn’t follow some sort of structure. Which is why verse is important.
It’s like comparing a 5-year-old’s Lego house to the Empire State Building. Yes they are both things. No they are not both buildings. You go live in a 5-year-old’s Lego house (I mean the average 5-year-old, not some Lego prodigy) if you want to say so.
So there you have it. Real poems need to have:
Rhyme
- varied rhyming sounds
- meaningful rhyming words
- eye-rhymes if all else fails
Rhythm
- regular stress/unstress patterns, iambic pentameter by default
- structure
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