Of course a rhymed poem should have the poetic virtues you mention. I'm not sure whom you have in mind, so not sure whether I would agree or disagree with you about any particular case.
I think I would disagree that EVERY rhyme-sound must be completely new and fresh (have a look at the thread I started "on making old rhymes fresh" -- there I offer an argument that originality of the APPROACH to the rhyme has to be the standard. We can't continually invent new rhyme sounds, but it is possible to find new ways to get from a word to its rhyme.
Insofar as skill in rhyming is concerned, you seem to consider ONLY the unusualness of the rhyme. But there's much more to it: It's cleverer to rhyme different parts of speech than similar parts of speech; it's cleverer to rhyme words with different numbers of syllables.
More importantly, you seem to regard rhyming as a mere game -- something one does to show ones skill. And of course, it is partly a game (it's fun), but it has a more important poetic function in the poem. The rhyme provides a link between lines and between the ideas of those lines (often lines which are not immediately next to one another). The grammar of the poem goes in a straight line, but the rhyme cuts across this line, giving a second dimension to the poem. This cross-referencing of lines seems to me to be a poetic virtue -- or at least it is if the rhyme words are important, and if they are being associated for some reason of comparison or contrast. And this cross-referencing is something that a free verse poet can't do (or can't do so economically).
Even where the rhyme itself is not surprising, there may be a reason for linking the two lines -- perhaps a surprising reason.
This brings us to a poetically important reason NOT to choose the cleverest newest rhyme all the time. A rhyme that links the important ideas of the poem in ways that might get one to think in a different way about those two ideas is to be preferred to a brand new rhyme which does none of this. Also, there are times when overt cleverness is distracting or unwanted for other reasons. In a poem I posted recently "Netherletter" on Metrical I, I try to come up with a series of clever rhymes, but I end with a rather boring rhyme "loam/home' partly in order to give a sense of completion, of returning to the tonic -- and perhaps to give the line a sense of greater sincerity and gravity after the "cleverer" rhymes preceding it.
If you want to attack somebody's rhymes without giving offense, and want to hear what the writer would say in defense -- you could go to that thread and rip me apart, if you want.
I only suggest that because I'm having a hard time defending ALL rhymes everywhere, but also see why you might not want to name those you feel use boring rhymes. You're perfectly welcome to rip into my rhymes.
--Chris
PS Richard posted his far pithier response while I was writing this. It occurs to me that harmony (or counterpoint) is a pretty good analogy for what I described as a second dimension that rhyme provides to verse.
[This message has been edited by ChrisW (edited August 02, 2001).]
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