When I teach the poetry section of Creative Writing, I have students bring in and read a favorite poem then explain why they like it. About 80% of the poems they bring in are rhyming poems. When regular people think of poetry, most of them think of rhyme. My students will occasionally ask of free verse, "What makes this a poem?" To most people, poetry rhymes. I think the abandonment of rhyme is part of the reason why poetry has dropped off the charts as a popular form of literature (not just that, but it's a big part).

Now, something else. Re-reading "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," I came across one of my all-time favorites, near the end:

He went like one that hath been stunned.

Love that rhyme! Not an exact rhyme but unexpected and good.

So that's editors, teachers, and FV poets, but not plain folks, as I see it.

That's right, Maryann.

The resistance to rhyme (and traditional devices in general) originates in the universities, where any poetry older than last century is considered to be fatally infected with colonialist ideas. And so, anyone writing today and using such devices must be a closet colonialist, whose work should be ignored.

The non-academic reading public generally adore rhyme.

Well, sure, Mark, but wouldn't you say, in fairness, that most of them are?

Heh. Just kiddin', Mark. I wanted to see how high your blood pressure could get within the interstices of two posts.

No worries, John http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

That's right - it is an absolutely ridiculous association, but I have SEEN it in operation - metrical verse is tarred with the brush of the despised "old".

Maryann,

I made that statement about "plain ol' readers of poetry" too off-the-cuff. Of course lots of readers of poetry like rhyme. But my impression has been that the associations with rhyme we've talked about--"outdated," "sticks out too much," "colonialist," etc.--are also held by some or even many people who don't write poetry much or at all.

I'm thinking of people in my life--in-laws, friends, friends of friends. I'm quite certain that they feel a bit leery of rhyme in a contemporary poem ("hate" would be too strong a word, since they don't give poetry much thought, period). They're more comfortable with free verse, it's more on their radar, is all.

Unless the poetry is hip-hop or some other popular form--interestingly, that changes the picture.

On the other hand, even those sing-song rhymers at Hallmark have relented, offering a host of mawkish sentiment now in free verse greetings (as well as the rhymed ones).

David's statistic heartens me. I'm happy to hear that so many students bring rhymed poems as samples of what they like.

Writing this, I now realize what I meant: it's not "plain ol' readers of poetry" that aren't comfortable with rhyme in the way I describe; it's people who neither read nor write it. My experience has been that they tune in more easily to free verse--when they pay any attention to poetry at all. I assume that this is only because free verse is what they're used to thinking of as contemporary.

Andrew

John, thanks for those links. I need to read both more carefully, but on a quick read I've enjoyed the essay on "Nothing Gold Can Stay" tremendously, both for its own insights and for the chance to smile again at that lovely poem, one that's in my brain's permanent collection.

Andrew, thanks for clarifying further. As I think about the reasons various people have mentioned here for the dislike of rhyme, it seems to me that different groups probably have different reasons. I can't substantiate any of this, but it seems to me that

(1)folks with minimal literary education are the ones who remain in their original, childlike love of rhyme,

(2) folks with only lit-survey exposure to poetry, who stopped reading it with their last required humanities credit, mistakenly believe they're supposed have gone beyond it, and

(3)folks with advanced exposure to creative writing programs will have

(i) been warned not to attempt rhyme because their first efforts at it have all the flaws Michael mentions above, or

(ii) have been exposed to the critical theories Mark describes, or

(iii)both. Unless they have teachers like David, of course.

The would-be authors of children's books that Roger refers to fall, I think, in group (1), while editors of poetry journals are more likely to be in group (3).

What am I leaving out? And what might solutions look like?

gone with the wind

[This message has been edited by Jan D. Hodge (edited March 05, 2008).]

(Only because some excellent poets ((I'm not one)) have posted their own)

I write to amuse myself and these rhymes amused me:

Diptych: Café Schwarzenberg


A paradox—his ancient, unlined face,
this melton-draped, this famed poète maudit,
this finical Ducati-debauchee—
is pomped, paraded to his usual place.
With anecdotes and ardors to retrace
in pruney diction banishing the schwa,
he’ll swirl a ’90 Chateau Lyonnat
and call his too-cold plateware “a disgrace”.

The Strauss and Mozart mezzo (mid-career)
dangles a fork of ‘au torchon’ foie gras
above her soap stud’s youthful, granite chin.
The waiter realizes something queer
yet halts this speech (imagine her chagrin):
“You’ve switched roles to become the Marschallin!”

Mike, it's not only the rhymes that are a pleasure but also the depiction of these characters and their setting.

Now I'm really in a pickle. Here I am enjoying all these poems that, strictly speaking, y'all aren't supposed to be posting. Maybe we'd better try harder to be demonstrating something with them http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif