What's Wrong with Rhyming Poems?

Some one once said that with rhyming poems it is easier to write bad ones and with poems that don't rhyme it is more difficult to write good ones.

I have George Sterling's largely rhymed dark poems ("The Thirst Of Satan") in my library and read in it from time to time. Rhymed poetry like that should have no problem finding a publisher.

As to why editors (if they aren't) are not excepting rhymed poems, I can only guess that you may not have submitted to the right places or that they just haven't bought into you language. Keep trying.

Does anyone else write dark rhyming poetry?

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Yes, and others do too, though not often, it seems.

I did read a discussion about the perceived preference of
free verse but it was more related to apostrophe and
antiquated forms. Free verse seems to have become more
prevalent from around 1950 having started being noted
sometime before 1920. These are rough estimates based on
conjecture and what I summarize from that discussion.

Why the preference for publication of free verse only?
Possibly because it seems more people compose free verse
and the publications are looking to sell what people will buy.
Since more people write free verse it is taken that those
people will buy free verse. It is circular logic but self
sustaining. This is my perspective as a structured rhyming
verse enthusiast.

You can find rhyme preferred publications and forums if you
look hard enough. They are rare but still around.

What about The Evertalis?

We don't exclude rhyme or dark horror. We also run a contest and the guidelines say nothing about rhyme. The thing is that you never seem to find the perfect market - you have to plug away at decimal matches until you get one as close as possible.

BTW -- not all classical and/or formal poetry is intended to rhyme. Free verse/free-form is just one direction of non-rhyming poetry, there are also classical and formalist types pre-dating many rhyming forms.

I'm old enough that Rhyming Poetry IS poetry

What's wrong with wrong with non ryhming poetry is the same thing that's wrong with 'reality' TV.

Aint nothing wrong with rhyme
I use it all the time...

SJL said:

It would seem that the overall preference for poetry is free form / not rhyming.

So many places that accept poetry specifically say, "We don't accept rhyming poetry" "If it rhymes, we don't want it" and so on.

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Probably because they don't want to read tons of poorly written rhyming poems. A lot of people think a good rhyming poem just has to rhyme at the end of each line and it's a winner, so they write poetry that's pretty bad.

Slush piles are rumored to be filled with pretty poor writing anyway. Add in rhyme, and wow.

Unless a publication is totally against rhyme, a really well-written poem of that type should be snapped up because it's a rare bird.

Shelley

I really like in-line rhyme...prefer it over end-line rhyme. But I always go with---if it works, it's great. I go by the individual poem. I like or dislike a poem, not a format.

Rhyming poetry is haunted by one of the same things that haunts non-rhyming poetry: by its nature, it encourages sloppiness and lack of discipline.

It should be obvious how non-rhyming poetry can do that. Only a bit less obvious is how rhymes can befuddle the poet and worsen the poem.

Trying to rhyme can lead to straining for a rhyme. Strain enough and the poet can wind up picking any rhyme at all. Worse, sometimes he can put his lines through some terrible twists and turns to get to a poor rhyme. And some rhymes are obvious enough we can see them coming eliminates the joy of surprise.

On a higher level, one can be led to a rhyme that is not so much poor as ... uninteresting. This problem is unique to rhyme; a non-rhyming poem can use the very best word every time. Preserving a bit of rhythm, non-rhyming poems can even attain in large part the aspect of song, which is one of the things we enjoy about rhymed poetry the most. It's no small problem. Look over your rhymes. Are they interesting, or merely functional?

The other major problem with rhyming is that it can make a poem sound sing-song. When this unintentionally happens, it can make even a very serious poem unintentionally slight or even hilarious. Your deeply personal poem about the experience of being raped is going to lose a lot of its power if it sounds like Dr. Seuss wrote it.

Unfortunately, none of this is uncommon when poets attempt rhyme. Rhyme is very beguiling, and achieving what feels like even approximate success in it can cloud one's judgment. So poor rhyme is an easy trap to fall into. That's a particular shame because it takes a bit of ambition to even dare to write rhymed verse. Now we know why in the olden days most people didn't sail to the ends of the earth. You could fall off. Dragons be there for ye.

Perhaps part of the problem is that consistent end-rhyme is not popular enough to give modern writers a great breadth and depth of present-day role models. Who do you judge yourself against from your own times, talking about the things you care about? Slim pickings.

Contributing is that we're inundated with so much crappy pop music that our standards for rhyme have cratered. When you hear, "Baby baby it feels so right/I wanna be with you ...." in a pop song, maybe some great Motown voices make you forget that you already know the next word is going to be "tonight" and you've heard almost the identical silly, unimaginative words before in a hundred songs. On paper, though -- whew, what a stinker. But if that's the only type of rhyme you ever hear in the modern world, and you hear it often enough ... will you be able to tell the difference between good rhyme and bad?

Blarg said it well. Rhyming poetry tends to be written in a juvenile way, with simple rhymes at the end of simple phrases. Too many poets will torture the language, using archaic inversions and incorrect grammar, just to get the rhyming syllable in the right place.

Rhyming poetry in excellent meter is quite musical, beautiful. But when done without skill it can be really clunky.

Buy yourself a good rhyming dictionary, it not only helps when you get stuck for a rhyme, it also helps you get over many of the problems mentioned.

I find the ones I use often act as an aid to the dreaded writer's block. Investigating rhyme options often leads to a viable solution to a problem line. (a thesaurus works as well, as does a good internet search engine.)

There, rhymes can be good for you after all...

Rhyming poetry is awesome, when someone can do it.

The problem with it, that I see, is that is isn't very natural to English. Rhyming in Italian is a lot easier than in English--and a lot of English forms pull influence from Italian traditions.

Anglo-Saxon prosody is just as valid of a tradition.

That's not to say that rhyming doesn't work or that it has no place in poetry--on the contrary, I think it's beautiful when it's done well. But doing it well can be a chore. It requires amazing skill with themes, metaphor and synecdoche, and it takes a long, long time to master. There's more to learn in trying to express an idea differently than in trying to rhyme it.

Immediately I thought of one of my favorite poets - dark, rhyming, E.A. Poe. Love his stuff. I have written rhyming poetry but when it's off there is no salvation. Rather like hitting a bad note in a piece of music that distracts the audience from the rest of the piece. Losing the cadence stops the reader and, as has been said here already, forcing a rhyme spoils it for the reader as well as the poet.

Don't give up. Good rhyming poetry - dark or not - has a place.

Norman D Gutter said:

Blarg said it well. Rhyming poetry tends to be written in a juvenile way, with simple rhymes at the end of simple phrases. Too many poets will torture the language, using archaic inversions and incorrect grammar, just to get the rhyming syllable in the right place.

Rhyming poetry in excellent meter is quite musical, beautiful. But when done without skill it can be really clunky.

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I completely second (third) this, but I enthusiastically assert that non-rhyming poems are subject to exactly the same pitfall: clumsy prosody. Rhymes just put a name on something to dislike about a poem. A bad poem is a bad poem, but a bad free-verse poem sinks from sight without a ripple. Bad rhyming poems make a splash on the way down.

Rhyme and meter are seminal tools of prosody and very effective, and pleasing, when used well and in the right place. This is true, more or less, of any tool.

I wrote a post here a few days ago, and it was lost in the, er, data loss. In sum: I'm not precisely pro-rhyming, because I don't believe that rhyme is always the right thing. But I am most certainly anti-'anti-rhyme'.

Teena said:

Immediately I thought of one of my favorite poets - dark, rhyming, E.A. Poe. Love his stuff. I have written rhyming poetry but when it's off there is no salvation. Rather like hitting a bad note in a piece of music that distracts the audience from the rest of the piece. Losing the cadence stops the reader and, as has been said here already, forcing a rhyme spoils it for the reader as well as the poet.

Don't give up. Good rhyming poetry - dark or not - has a place.

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Poe and rhyme -- he had a very unusual relationship with rhyme, with poetry in general. Poe has written some of the most beautiful and engaging love poems in history -- yet they're not all that memorable, if we're honest. The one's most noted, the one's that most recall are the darker ones. Why? Certainly not for the rhymes, but more for the thematic elements, the despair, the macabre, the darkness, the desolation -- above all else, Poe had an exquisite handle on irregular meter, metric format and construct that met his themes in a glorious marriage of rhyme and alien rhythm. Again, you could ask the same question here with an additional word and answer the original, what is wrong with rhyming love poetry? Familiarity. This spawns complacency - the same evil that haunts all writing and so much is sacrificed for the sake of it.

Barg said it best.

I think the point about rhyme being used as a band-aid to cover up the gaping wound of bad poetry is a legit one. However, I think we should be more specific concerning which type of rhyming (or rhyme scheme) that we're putting on trial here.

There are some fairly sophisticated rhyme patterns that can be employed to sort of lift your work out of the ho-hum end line-rhyming poetry dregs. The more intricate the construction, the better command the poet must have of his vocabulary and flow. However, this should be secondary to whatever it is the poet is trying to say.

Personally when rhyming poetry (which I do a little less than half of the time) I like to mix in line with end line and various other schemes to give it that layered effect. In this respect it becomes much more challenging to compose rhymed works, but when I finally finish one I get such a larger sense of satisfaction.

I think above all else though, it must sound natural and unforced. There is nothing more uncomfortable then when you read someone's work and you can see the stretch marks from where they were dead set on using some phrase for the sake of the rhyme. You have to be able to let it go if needed.

I think that these types of publications are against "rhyming poetry" because so many people (non-writers especially) define poetry as "rhyming words" and neglect the other aspects and overall feeling of the poem. A poem in its most essential form should be a vehicle to transport the reader through or to another place through its vivid description. I think it's unfortunate, though, that these places would paint all poets with the same brush. Surely, they would not turn away Shakespeare? Although he was strictly speaking a playwright rather than a poet his plays are written as poetry and they rhyme. Rhyme is a convention that can be included in some types of poetry and when I write poetry I prefer to use it, for its melodic qualities. Banning it all together seems the equivalent of saying that a novel can't include dialogue because sometimes it's cheesy. Sure, sometimes it is and sometimes rhyming is as well. But, both used correctly are brilliant and can enhance the work.

I have always hated poetry. Mainly because it's what I do. Secondly, because there is so much bad poetry. Both rhyming and non-rhyming. having said that,i love poetry. if done properly, it speaks to the soul, much more beautifully than any prose ever could.

I have met many people who have thrown lines upon paper and have been self-proclaimed as a poet laureate when it doesn't even make sense. When I write a poem, I want it to be understood, even if it's bad.

Then there are those "famous" poets. I hate many of them as well. I don't care who it is, if it speaks to me, it speaks to me. If it doesn't, it doesn't. I wouldn't give two bits for all the poetry winners in any given year. Some years, I've read the whole thing. They sound tired, redundant, and lifeless.

First and foremost, a poem should tell a story, whether ballad, ode, or whatever. Secondly, there should be a brevity of words. A short poem can tell the same story as a 20 page novel if done properly.

I'm not saying I do any of this, but I try. Rhyme meter, and other "rules" are of secondary importance to me. But use your best vocabulary. Make it come alive. Artfully choose the words that paint the picture you want to paint. Don't stop until it's just right. Then I will love it.

I am my own worst critic. I despise many of my poems.

flea23 said:

First and foremost, a poem should tell a story, whether ballad, ode, or whatever. Secondly, there should be a brevity of words.

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Is this an opinion or a definition? If it's the latter, I take exception to this nonsense - if the former, I disagree totally.

Any poem should be understood was my point. It should stretch the mind, yes, but not so far that the heights can't be reached by anyone else. In My Humble Opinion.

Agreed.

Mostly.

I'm most interested in poems and poets that stretch the spirit. I can stretch my mind with a crossword puzzle, or almost any old thing, and find better entertainment and more enlightenment in the process than when decoding a poem. What I seek is one spirit authentically communicating to another. Preferably something interesting. Poetry's distillation of language echoes a distillation of spirit. Distillation of language and spirit working together make for good poetry. Cluttering it all back up again, to me at least, generally subtracts with every addition.

Rhyming in poetry can can add depth and feeling, as in Yeats:

"WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;"

Loosely translated from an older poem by Pierre de Ronsard, btw, with the same rhyme scheme.

"Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,
Assise auprès du feu, dévidant et filant,
Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous émerveillant :
Ronsard me célébrait du temps que j’étais belle."

Or, Brownings Last Duchess, a narrative poem of rhyming couplets, so skillfully done that we hardly notice them.

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

Or Wilfred Owen:

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

Or Rupert Brooke:

White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,
Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust
Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; 30
Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;
And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;
And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours. . .

The rhymes never intrude upon the narrative; they're almost invisible unless you concentrate on them

Then we have Eliot. No rhymes -- but rhythm, and evocative in the extreme:

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Rhyme in poetry is just one tool, like metaphor, meter, imagery, etc. To rhyme or not is a choice, appropriate to what you are writing. Rhyme, or lack of it, has little to do with the essence of poetry. It can add or detract -- depending on the skill of the poet.

flea23 said:

Any poem should be understood was my point. It should stretch the mind, yes, but not so far that the heights can't be reached by anyone else. In My Humble Opinion.

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Agreed - but overly literal language is also not poetry in any way shape or form as it lacks the soul of what poetry is.

Most of my poetry is written with the explicit intention of having no direct perceivable reality attached to it. When a person reads poetry, it is a personal and individual process that assimilates the written word into what the reader can read into on the basis of both literary and metal context. The former being the make-up of the poem and the choice of words, sonics and device - the latter being what the reader understands based on personal experience, intelligence, preference and general state of being at the time. If a poem has a sense of direct perceivable reality removed from it, it becomes even more a personal thing - as now it is intended to be read in whichever way the reader chooses. Such poetry can be interpreted differently by the same person on different days.

To ignore the possibilities of creativity, and to stay within literal grounds, forever to shy away from the abstract is silly -- we can be abstract without being obscure. You can be direct without having to spell it out. However, even then the basis is to be understood in the sense that it can be interpreted -- but what allows for that? Rich imagery? Dense, layered metaphor? Interesting and well-paced rhythm? Even register? Decent vocabulary? Rhyme? The answer, whatever it takes...