| User | Lost Sheep |
| Topic | To rhyme or not to r |
| Message | To rhyme or not to rhyme, that is the question. Actually, it’s not a question needing an universal answer. It’s a question each poet answers, or perhaps each poem. There’s no right or wrong, no black or white, no dismal backwaters or holy nirvanas. In fact the question is not rhyme at all, but the entire interconnected world of rhyme, meter and form, from Haiku to Sonnet to Villanelle.
Personally, I write for two reasons, to explore and to communicate. I want to explore my personal world and communicate what it’s like to others. I want to make them see what I see and feel what I feel. I want people to laugh in the streets and cry in their bedrooms. I want people to see things in new ways. I want to make the rich frat rat see the homeless man as a man worth knowing. I want the retired man to know where a cutter’s actions come from. I want the anti-abortion people think about the pregnant teens and the pro-abortion people to think about the babies. I want to expand horizons, to help people grow. I want them all to understand. I want them to feel. So how can rhyme help? Does shoehorning my words into a lock step form somehow make them more intuitive or relatable? Are words more "user friendly" in a ABAB rhyme scheme? It’s obvious how rhyme can rip the soul out of a piece, if it’s poorly done, but in the hands of a master, can it ever help communicate better? Or is the concept of rhyme and meter merely an interesting word game to play when we’re tired of crossword puzzles? "What word fits in a bar and rhymes with think?" |
|| Replies ||
| User | Jeniffer | 2006-07-22 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | Rhyming brings together a poem like nothing else. But not every poem has to rhyme. It depends on the point and tone. Some can be said in almost conversational tone without any rhythm some can be extravagantly free verse, with fickle rhyme and rhythm that goes back and forth from rhyme to no rhyme unpredictably. Not everyone can pull that one off, though.... |
| User | DavidHirt | 2006-07-22 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | Its something you have to work on, DGR |
| User | DaGrimReaperess | 2006-07-12 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | i cant rhyme at alll. |
| User | GiveMeTheGun | 2006-07-11 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | I suppose.
Yeah don’t rhyme if you’re gonna be all; I sit in the shade, And cut with a blade. |
| User | DavidHirt | 2006-07-11 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | Some people just can’t rhyme. It’s difficult to rhyme well. But you should have an understanding for the sound of words. We write words. the more you can understand them, the better you’ll use them. |
| User | GiveMeTheGun | 2006-07-10 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | You don’t have to rhyme.
But it’s funner. So blah. |
| User | BusterLILblock | 2006-07-10 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | noo rhyme |
| User | DavidHirt | 2006-05-06 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | Even those who want to learn can’t be taught. It still comes down to a personal experience of it. |
| User | DavidHirt | 2006-04-27 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | It’s a lesson people need to learn Freya. Unfortunately it isn’t something that yoou can tell a modern poet and expect them to take it to heart. All you can do is keep pointing them to it until they actually experience it and take it to heart. My poetry classes never really taught me much of anything, except maybe a few terms and how to scan a line of poetry... and even that, though I love my old poetry prof to death, was sketchy and I still remember the day I argued with him in class about scansion.
However, I made all my breakthroughs in poetry under my own studies and my own reading... especially meter. |
| User | Fantastic Freya | 2006-04-24 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | Meter, like everything else in poetry, is a tool. Different meters evoke different moods. Mixed meter is a valuable technique for altering that mood. Iambs are ponderous, soothing like a heartbeat; trochees are strong, pounding like a drum; dactyls waltz and anapests gallop. It is important to match meter to mood, and if your poem is mercurial in mood then so can your meter be.
Sorry, that sounded like a lesson -- but using one fixed meter just because that’s the way it’s done most often is no good reason for me. |
| User | Lost Sheep | 2006-04-24 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | I should probably preface this with the fact that most of my education lies outside the field of poetry, because a lot of the time I’m clueless. LOL
Still, meter and rhythm to me have always been about repeats, in music, in software, in athletics, in dance. It’s always about marking a beat, in one fashion or another. There’s no doubt that Kubla Kahn is meant to be read in a "non-conversational" way, but it’s never struck me as rhythmic. To be honest, if I encountered Kubla Kahn on ES, I’d probably suggest a more regular rhythm. It’s probably just the redneck in me harrassing the computer geek. Steve |
| User | Fantastic Freya | 2006-04-24 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | Steve, look at Coleridge’s Kubla Khan -- just an example I pulled off the top of my head -- and ignore the rhyme. The meter is not fixed, it varies from section to section, and it is in fact rhyming free verse, because it adheres to no structure. Yet if you parse it, you find that there are lines which are iambic, some which contain dactyls, some which are a mishmash. I don’t think anyone would say it is non-metric, however, because it is supposed to be read with a metric tone. |
| User | Lost Sheep | 2006-04-24 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | Freya brought up that ALL written pieces will have a subtly different message than the poet’s first conception and she’s absolutely right.
To me, though, the ultimate goal (aka unattainable nirvana, holy grail) of writing is to perfectly communicate that emotion. I can wrestle with a piece a dozen times over two weeks, grumping about one phrase that’s missing a subtle nuance I’m looking for. That’s why I have such a hard time writing rhyme, personally. I get close to that meaning and I hate to back away from it, even an inch. Steve |
| User | Lost Sheep | 2006-04-24 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | This brings some interesting definitions that I’ve heard used many different ways. I would say that anything that has non-repeating meter has no meter at all. Sure, it rolls of the tongue, but so does a well written technical brief. To my myopic brain, saying "No fixed metrical pattern does not mean no meter at all." is a lot like finding an ABCDEF rhyming pattern. If there’s no pattern, how can we define meter?
Where is the boundary between meter and non? For that matter, where is the line between free verse and prose? Steve |
| User | Fantastic Freya | 2006-04-24 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | No fixed metrical pattern, true. That does not mean no meter at all. |
| User | joeyalphabet | 2006-04-24 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | I think even if free verse doesn’t have strict meter, there is some sort of rhythm to it. |
| User | mae | 2006-04-24 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | Freya, every definition of ’free verse’ that I read says that it has no fixed metrical pattern. mae |
| User | Fantastic Freya | 2006-04-23 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | "Still, it takes just as much time and effort to make a good free verse piece as it does a good metered piece."
I doubt anyone will disagree. Perhaps the difficulty lies with "free verse" writers who are unwilling to put the time and effort in, mistakenly believing that the first word is always the best and what flows out their pen is never less than perfect. Incidentally, "free verse" does not mean without rhyme or meter. It means without verse structure. Thus rhyme and meter are tools of all poetry. |
| User | Fantastic Freya | 2006-04-23 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | "A perfectly metered piece will always contain a subtly different message than the author started with."
Steve, might I suggest that this is true for any piece which goes onto paper. Words do not perfectly convey thought, and each reader brings to a word a slightly different interpretation based on their own experiences and mental patterns. Many poets who write with meter do not think about it at all, nor does it alter their intent, because they are so familiar with it that it is second nature. On the other hand, a poor communicator will be poor regardless of the vessel they choose to employ. |
| User | Lost Sheep | 2006-04-23 | |
| Subject | untitled |
| Message | "Those who decry formula poetry because it ’stifles creativity’ or whatever often simply don’t have the temerity to tackle something that requires working on the craft of writing."
I’m sure that there are some lazy ones out there (there always are). Still, it takes just as much time and effort to make a good free verse piece as it does a good metered piece. I think it’s always a choice of meaning vs. structure. No two sentences mean the same exact thing. "A tall tree shadowed the path." "The trail wound beneath an old dark cedar." "The dim light beneath the tree made the trail difficult to see." These sentences are similar, but they don’t say the same thing. Do we want readers to focus on the tree? The trail? The darkness? The monster hidden there? Everytime we revise a work, we change the meaning, sometimes hugely, somnetimes subtly. As authors, we’re forced to make these choices. We can spend our effort choosing sentences that mean exactly what we mean, or we can spend our time creating meter. There’s nothing at all wrong with either choice and good poets can write both ways. On the other hand, I think the two things will always fight with one another. A perfectly metered piece will always contain a subtly different message than the author started with. A piece with it’s meaning perfectly intact will be really terrible meter or (hopefully) freeform. Steve |