# Rhyming poetry



## escorial (Jun 27, 2013)

When writing poetry I try to stay away from rhyming as it feels more like lyrics for a song but sometimes my simplistic approach reads like a list of sentences. Can poetry be defined as anything that you care to write about without some form of poetic fluency?


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## OurJud (Jun 27, 2013)

Poetry's a strange animal, I find, and maybe I'm not the one to be replying, but I shall anyway. The thing about poetry is that on the rare occasions I've dabbled, I've had absolutely no idea if what I've written is any good, or even if it would be considered poetry by the experts. I suspect the answer to both those questions would be a no.

I may be wrong, but I feel poetry has far more rules than general fiction writing does, and not knowing those rules can make things difficult.

It short, I can't answer your question :culpability:


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## Bloggsworth (Jun 27, 2013)

If you write it and say it is poetry, it is poetry, simple as that.


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## Travers (Jun 27, 2013)

Poetic rules are arbitrary, and, as Bloggs says, if you write it and call it poetry, it is poetry. 

That isn't to say that everything that people write and call poetry is considered _good_ poetry. Personally, I've enjoyed most of the poetry of yours that I've read, so I'd say you're winning.


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## Skodt (Jun 27, 2013)

After T.S Eliot's, "The love song" poetry became very simple. Write what you feel; and then structure it in a readable way. No reason to rhyme, no reason to have your stanza's in order, no need for rhythm, poetry is pretty much whatever you want.


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## Gamer_2k4 (Jun 27, 2013)

Bloggsworth said:


> If you write it and say it is poetry, it is poetry, simple as that.



Sadly.


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## OurJud (Jun 27, 2013)

Wow! There's a coincidence. I was just about to post a link to a book of poetry I highly recommend called _The Mersey Sound_, when I noticed escorial is from Liverpool too.

Anyway, on the off chance you haven't already, buy yourself this. It contains wonderful examples of just what poetry can be.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0141189266/


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## escorial (Jun 27, 2013)

Cheers Our Jud...read it years ago..


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## ppsage (Jun 27, 2013)

Poetry is a generalization with a lot of outliers, especially in the minds of its creators; there is however a heart to it which makes sense but is difficult to express succinctly. Things are generally more poetic which use imagery to express a larger meaning or connection. They might also usually demonstrate some concern with the strictly verbal aspect of language: its cadence, rhythm and sound, often indicated by line breaks which don't make sense in prose. The skillful utilization of the basic elements of poetry can take many and highly idiosyncratic forms: a difficulty of categorization which is compounded by the fierce subjectivity with which many of its creators analyse their methodology.


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## Kevin (Jun 27, 2013)

Gamer_2k4 said:


> Sadly.


 Now, now, you must allow us our folly. After all, it is an art form which is ever so popular with the masses.


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## Lewdog (Jun 27, 2013)

Poetry really isn't quite the same as it used to be.  Poetry used to have a lot more rules and structure, and often told a detailed story and not just a thought.  It's the way of the world.


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## Squalid Glass (Jun 29, 2013)

I still contend poetry must be rhythmic. Even with free verse and modern poetry, the most successful examples are always going to have a natural rhythm to them. Doesn't have to be a set rhythm or even a conscious one, but the art form is designed around the idea of word music.


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## Bloggsworth (Jun 29, 2013)

If in doubt, record yourself reading what you have written, any errors in rhythm will become glaringly obvious. The natural rhythm of the English language is iambic and though it may be thought to be a matter of counting syllables it doesn't necessarily work that way because, though you may have an even number of "stresses", they may be so unnatural as to be unreadable, for instance it seldom works if you have two contiguous 3 syllable words, as adhering to the rhythm may make one or both words sound like a forced fit. If you can read it, and it has the feel of natural speech, then you are heading in the right direction - Of course, this doesn't work if you are trying to write in an old fashioned way by using an excess of inversions or anachronistic words & pronouns such as thee or thou...


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## escorial (Jul 2, 2013)

whats the difference between lyrics and poetry?


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## Gamer_2k4 (Jul 2, 2013)

escorial said:


> whats the difference between lyrics and poetry?



Lyrics are poetry that has been given musical pitch.  I'm pretty sure that's the only difference.

Alternately, it could be poetry that's been given backing music (the words in a rap song would still be considered lyrics).


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## Glass Pencil (Jul 8, 2013)

Poetry is art, and art is a lot of things. A lot of people make a lot of claims about what art is or isn't, but to the artist it all might as well be background noise. a thousand stodgy old professors might decry your efforts as ludicrous, distasteful, harmful to the fabric of society even, but in the end it is an individual experience for everyone that reads it. Art to some is smut to others.

The only caveat I'd add to the definition of poetry is that its construction has meaning. It seeks to engage the mind not just through the transference of information, but through emotion, rhythm and energy. If you just wanted to tell a story you'd tell the story, poetry tries to tread deeper than that, to the underlying foundations of the human animal. It is noises and feelings, it is a paint brush dabbed in the color of language.


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## flea23 (Sep 27, 2013)

Poetry needs to have rhythm, not necessarily rhyme. if you choose to rhyme, it should be natural, not forced. Forced rhyming is like Jack &b Jill. I like to avoid short lines. There are supposed to be "rules" for poetry. I ignore them and make my own. Poetry, after all, is nothing more than conveying the maximum thought in the fewest words as possible. Make every word count. 

The "experts" who try to make the rules, I think, are the ones who have ruined poetry for everyone. I like to set my own parameters and work within my own rules. For instance, one of my best projects went for 19 pages. it was a five book series with every single line ending with "OO". Ther was internal rhyming and other self-made parameters. It became difficult to make it appear "natural".

I hate poetry mostly because of the experts. I write to please me, not them. Consequently, I'll probably never be published. I love the classical poetry - that's because they wrote before there were any so called rules.


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## Bloggsworth (Sep 27, 2013)

flea23 said:


> The "experts" who try to make the rules, I think, are the ones who have ruined poetry for everyone.



What? Like the Football Association have ruined soccer?

The rules don't work if you are unable to use them, and there is great skill in writing to the rules. You can write any kind of poetry you want, but the mythical _Man on the Clapham Omnibus_ is far more comfortable with poetry that follows rules, that rhymes, which has a consistent metre, for them, rules have ruined nothing. Show the man in the street blank verse, free verse or concrete poetry and they will probably say that it's not poetry; but then, the poet is not writing for anyone but himself is he...


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## beepmachine (Nov 4, 2013)

i never set out to write a poem that rhymes; it just happens.
sometimes it happens a little too often, actually, and i find myself with a lot of fragmented little two-liners i could never develop into anything because i was sucked into a rhyme scheme from the get go.
but the ones that work are some of my favorites. there's something to be said about a poem that rhymes, but doesn't feel forced. too often these days people make rhymes for the sake of making rhymes, and it leads to a clunky mess of a poem that has lost its meaning and doesn't sound good, either.
but my approach to writing poetry doesn't usually start with anything resembling structure or logic.
it just happens.


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## Olly Buckle (Jan 17, 2014)

The main difference between a lyric and a poem for me is that a poem can be as subtle as you like, a lyric has to be pretty well in your face. A poem you can think over, re-read, take your time over; a lyric is pushed along and obscured by the music, before you know it it is here and gone. Read a few lyrics and you will see they often include repeats and slight variations on cliches that would seem ludicrously simple in a poem. It has to be that way for people to hear them, in fact even then you often need a 'hook', something extra obvious, to catch the attention over the music.  Of course there are no absolute rules, but slightly older fashioned lyrics will also include structures such as a chorus and bridge, and poems often express a paradox where lyrics usually have a pretty definite message.

Just writing what you feel is seen as poetry, I see it more as letting your feelings out. Consider the traditional sonnet, fourteen lines, written in iambic pentameters, with a predetermined rhyming scheme, a turning point in the middle that changes the point of view and a couplet at the end that pulls everything together. Terribly difficult to fill all these requirements and still say something worth saying in a way that sounds natural and harmonious, but there has to be something special in it because people have been trying hard with vaying success for hundreds of years and they are still at it. My feeling is that those who dismiss it as irrelevant in a modern age are phillistines missing out on their culture.


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## Bloggsworth (Jan 17, 2014)

The major problem with any lyric is actually hearing the words as words.


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## Dictarium (Jan 17, 2014)

I really, really dislike reading poetry that doesn't rhyme. Perhaps that's my plebeian, nonpoet mind talking, but it just rubs me the wrong way. If one worries about it sounding too sing-songy or overly happy for the feelings they wish to elicit, then one must simply try harder to create that affect while rhyming. Plus, making one's poetry rhymes adds a level of difficulty to it all and also allows for certain bits to be unrhymed in a Mending Wall-esque function-in-form break of meter or rhyme. It opens up a whole new world of possibilities of what you can do with the medium and it makes reading whatever you've written easier and more enjoyable on the mind of the reader (unless, as I mentioned, you specifically make one part unrhymed to make it more difficult for a reader to get through it).


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## aj47 (Feb 23, 2014)

Poetry has rules.  Some really good poetry breaks them, but the point is you have to know the rules to be able to break them and still have something of quality.

But, like art, where anyone can assemble something from any medium and proclaim it "art", anyone can string some words together and call it a poem.  And so, obviously, not all poems are created equal.

Personally, I prefer metered rhyme.  It doesn't have to be a classic "form" like a sonnet or terza rima--it doesn't even have to be end-rhyme.  But if it doesn't have some kind of structure it looks like wordbarf.  And I really have a difficult time respecting wordbarf as poetry.  I will call it whatever the author calls it, but in my heart, I will think of it as wordbarf.


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## dither (Feb 23, 2014)

A very interesting thread.

I'm no poet, and have never read poetry, much.

But i like a verse that has rhythm.
Rhyme, well, it IS really a matter of opinion. and personal taste. isn't it?


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## Olly Buckle (Feb 23, 2014)

Skodt said:


> After T.S Eliot's, "The love song" poetry became very simple... no need for rhythm...


I simply fail to comprehend equating T.S.Eliott with simplicity, and as for saying he does not have rhythm ...


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## escorial (Mar 18, 2014)

poetry like music has many forms and to place any static structures would only stop it from evolving..rhythm and disconnected word structure all have a place in the art of poetry for me.


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## Gargh (Mar 19, 2014)

There is value in structure and form, and value in breaking out from it, but I think it's difficult to appreciate the latter without understanding the former. 

One of Hardy's most famous poems, Drummer Hodge, is a thing of absolute beauty and would just not be the same without rhyme, rhythm, meter, scheme. By crafting his emotion into this beautifully sculptured form, it allows it to breathe, for me. When I read it, I am no longer thinking about the structure, but just the meaning; and that is where it parallels with music and lyrics again, because a good structure is like a good score, supporting the artistic intent of the words.


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## Ariel (Mar 19, 2014)

Like in any art knowing the rules of poetry allows you to break them.  The best way to learn how to write good poetry is to find good poetry and imitate it.  Then revise, revise, revise.


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## Ethan (Mar 19, 2014)

They say 'The Songs of Solomon' were the first poems, and indeed the 'Psalms of David' have their own poetic charms, but for me these are ecactly the same as 'Freeverse'. There is of course poetic license and personal preference to be allowed for that permits it to be considered poetry, but for me it is simply well written prose. I love rhyme in poetry I think it's what separates the two.
It's not that I don't enjoy some well written prose,  it's just that  I don't really consider it poetry.


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## Gamer_2k4 (Mar 19, 2014)

Ethan said:


> They say 'The Songs of Solomon' were the first poems, and indeed the 'Psalms of David' have their own poetic charms, but for me these are ecactly the same as 'Freeverse'. There is of course poetic license and personal preference to be allowed for that permits it to be considered poetry, but for me it is simply well written prose. I love rhyme in poetry I think it's what separates the two.



I wonder if the books rhymed in the original Hebrew?


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## Ariel (Mar 19, 2014)

The English language is not intrisically a great language for rhyming.  The romantic languages are and those languages are where we get many of our rhyming poem-forms like the sonnet (Italian).

English poetry was originally alliterative.


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## escorial (Mar 21, 2014)

so many excellent POV here..what i so like about this site is the amount of understanding and help that is offered...very rare!..have i come across negative feedback guys n gals.


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## escorial (Mar 21, 2014)

The thing that gets me about rhythm in poetry is how important the first line is..i just get the feeling everything is built around it!!!


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## Ariel (Mar 21, 2014)

It can be, escorial.  I find the best way for rhymes to really work is for the rhyme scheme to be subtle--usually interior rhyme and slant rhyme.


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## Olly Buckle (Mar 21, 2014)

Rhyming at fixed points in the lines or the verse is similar to the Anglo Saxon way of using alliteration at a fixed point, not necessarily the end of the line. That sort of usage doesn't quite have the subtle effect, it is a predictable constant, but there is some thing really basic about repetition, think of the chants children use amongst themselves. For subtlety I like the sort of rhymes that use the same consonant sonds but vary in the vowel, 'prudent respondant', 'credible arable'.

You can go the other way as well of course, it always amuses me that rhymes in which only the last silly bubble rhymes are called 'male rhymes' but if it is the last two or three syllables they are called 'Feminine rhymes'.


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## Kourtney (Mar 21, 2014)

I like reading some poetry that does rhyme...it is catchy then.  However I would rather have it not rhyme and make sense then to rhyme and not make sense.


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## Ariel (Mar 21, 2014)

Olly Buckle said:


> Rhyming at fixed points in the lines or the verse is similar to the Anglo Saxon way of using alliteration at a fixed point, not necessarily the end of the line. That sort of usage doesn't quite have the subtle effect, it is a predictable constant, but there is some thing really basic about repetition, think of the chants children use amongst themselves. For subtlety I like the sort of rhymes that use the same consonant sonds but vary in the vowel, 'prudent respondant', 'credible arable'.
> 
> You can go the other way as well of course, it always amuses me that rhymes in which only the last silly bubble rhymes are called 'male rhymes' but if it is the last two or three syllables they are called 'Feminine rhymes'.



This is a little off but I wish there was a gender neutral pronoun other than "it."  To me, "it" is an object not a person--not a being.


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## Squalid Glass (Mar 21, 2014)

"Ze" and "Zir" are commonly used as gender neutral pronouns. amsawtell, though those are used typically in regard to sexual orientation, so I'm not sure if that helps. :grumpy:


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## Olly Buckle (Mar 22, 2014)

amsawtell said:


> This is a little off but I wish there was a gender neutral pronoun other than "it."  To me, "it" is an object not a person--not a being.


"They" does not have to be plural.


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## riven_hands (Mar 24, 2014)

Personally I write non-rhyming poetry almost exclusively because a) that is what I find to read most of the time and b) rhyming often feels forced to me.  That's my largest problem with rhyming--too often it can feel forced and unnatural to the ear and that really ruins the poem for me if I stumble rhythmically in the same place every time.  However, rhythm, especially in free verse, is the most important thing I strive for in my poetry because that differentiates it from prose.  That being said, some of my favorite poems rhyme and there is nothing like a well-written poem that follows the "rules" of a particular form (like Shakespeare's sonnets or Milton's "On the Day of Christ's Nativity").  In the end, I think poetry should place more emphasis on rhythm, word choice, and emotion instead of getting bogged down in the details of character, plot, and setting like often happens in fiction.


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## Olly Buckle (Mar 25, 2014)

> rhyming often feels forced to me. That's my largest problem with rhyming--too often it can feel forced and unnatural to the ear and that really ruins the poem for me if I stumble rhythmically in the same place every time.


Nothing works well if it is used badly, but on the other hand nothing is used perfectly without practise. When I first started trying to rhyme I used a rhyming dictionary, but I found I was not using the obscure words I did not know, it was only as a sort of reminder. After a bit of use in that direction it seems that the brain sort of slips into gear and the rhymes come more naturally. It often does feel forced, but that is more a reason to practise and improve the use of it rather than to abandon it I feel. Nobody starts off perfect in any form of writing.


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## aj47 (Mar 25, 2014)

Depends on your usage whether "they" can be singular.  In business communications, I was taught "they" is always plural and the singular is "he or she" when speaking of people. 

As for the forcing of rhyme.  Giving speeches is like that.  If you're not good at it, they sound stilted.   If you're Martin Luther King, the words just flow. But I bet his early speeches were not as good, not as smooth.   

I look up to Byron for rhyme. He had no rhyming dictionary to assist him, but his working vocabulary was fabulous.  If all you're reading is unrhymed stuff, then you miss out on guys like Byron and Frost and so on.


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## Kevin (Mar 25, 2014)

Marshall Mathers made me quit trying.


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## aj47 (Mar 25, 2014)

Kevin said:


> Marshall Mathers made me quit trying.



I have to laugh at this.  His style is so not *my* style that he can't stop me.  We had a guy in our (now defunct) poetry group named Quin who did the most astonishing slam work.  Not my style either -- but I wrote about him, describing his take on love as "verbal molasses" (smooth and sweet but with a bite).   

I think that, like anything else, rhyming is a skill and as such, a person can choose to develop it or not. I agree, some people churn out horrible rhyme.  But Sturgeon's Law says 90% of everything is crud.   That applies to the rhymed and the unrhymed, equally.


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## Dictarium (Mar 30, 2014)

Olly Buckle said:


> "They" does not have to be plural.


I have been taught that it's bad form to use it in such a fashion that it refers to a single person.


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## Olly Buckle (Mar 30, 2014)

they
ðeɪ/
pronoun
pronoun: they

    1.
    used to refer to two or more people or things previously mentioned or easily identified.
    "the two men could get life sentences if they are convicted"
        people in general.
        "the rest, as they say, is history"
        informal
        people in authority regarded collectively.
        "they cut my water off"
    2.
    used to refer to a person of unspecified sex.
    "ask a friend if they could help"


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## Ariel (Mar 30, 2014)

Thanks, Olly.  May be too impersonal for love poetry though.


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## Dictarium (Mar 30, 2014)

Fair enough. I stand corrected.


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## zebacarts (May 3, 2016)

When you are writing a poem, it should be rhyming. and provide meaning and emotion are show on it. I read many poems and I really appreciate poet to write such a nice lines.


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