[Andrew Frisardi]

Susan,
Don't feel sad for them - to hell with 'em! They'll get it eventually, maybe. You're right, I think: it's learned behavior. They should read G. K. Chesterton on rhyme - he makes it all so fun - or someone like that. Kids don't have a problem with rhyme, adults do. Come to think of it, the same thing could be said about playing.
Andrew

[Maryann Corbett]

Susan and Andrew, I don't disagree at all that a dislike of rhyme is a handicap. But I wonder why such a handicap isn't discussed as one and isn't addressed specifically in education.

In fact, I wonder how it originates. People who become certified to teach English literature at the high school level have to read works from a broad range of literary periods; that's a severe trial if you hate rhyme. So I don't think rhyme-hating originates with teachers. It simply seems to me we could learn a lot more about dislike of rhyme. (I'm not suggesting we cater to it--I may have sounded as if I were, so let me correct that.)

[Michael Cantor]

My guess would be that rhyme-hating derives from the fact that - while much of the very best poetry is written in rhyme - so is much of the very worst, almost all of the dreary Hallmark stuff, web site after cloying web site of heart-and-flowers dreck, etc. and etc.

When somebody starts out to write in form, and what emerges botches the meter (and is consquently far more assaultive to the ear than bad free verse), is built on awful rhymes, flies up its own asshole with rhyme-driven inversions, pads in every line to force the meter, and focuses on simplistic themes - puppies are cute, kittens are cuter, spring is coming - it does a massive disservice to rhyme and meter.

I have a strong sense - this is instinct: I can't prove it, and would be interested in other opinions - that most neophytes and truly world-class bad poets write in rhyme. Quincy's DWA site has a long thread, for example, on the Worst Poem Ever Written, and virtually everything cited is rhymed. This has to rub off on people. When I listen to people and editors who "hate" rhyme what I believe I hear is a built-in prejudice against rhyme because of so much exposure to mediocre rhymed poetry, not through any sense of an inability to "hear" or "appreciate" rhyme.



[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited January 14, 2008).]

[Janet Kenny]

Originally posted by Michael Cantor:
My guess would be that rhyme-hating derives from the fact that - while much of the very best poetry is written in rhyme - so is much of the very worst, almost all of the dreary Hallmark stuff, web site after cloying web site of heart-and-flowers dreck, etc. and etc.

When somebody starts out to write in form, and what emerges botches the meter (and is consquently far more assaultive to the ear than bad free verse), is built on awful rhymes, flies up its own asshole with rhyme-driven inversions, pads in every line to force the meter, and focuses on simplistic themes - puppies are cute, kittens are cuter, spring is coming - it does a massive disservice to rhyme and meter.

I have a strong sense - this is instinct: I can't prove it, and would be interested in other opinions - that most neophytes and truly world-class bad poets write in rhyme. Quincy's DWA site has a long thread, for example, on the Worst Poem Ever Written, and virtually everything cited is rhymed. This has to rub off on people. When I listen to people and editors who "hate" rhyme what I believe I hear is a built-in prejudice against rhyme because of so much exposure to mediocre rhymed poetry, not through any sense of an inability to "hear" or "appreciate" rhyme.

Michael,
Allow me to pour a little friendly fury on your words here.

All bad music uses the same scale that good music uses. That proves what precisely? That we are mired in snobbery and fear of being confused in the minds of the tone deaf with bad music/poetry?

So primitive naturals sing the diatonic scale. That shouldn't drive us off to twelve-tone music as we cover our ears in fear of thirds and sixths.

All the tunes that drive me mad and infect my brain against my will are in the diatonic scale. So is Beethoven. So is Bach.

Women have been ill treated by men for centuries but most women know the difference between good sex and exploitation.

Any editor who is so atrophied or undeveloped as to be still affected by such things is a pea-brained moron.

Can it be that the talentless have managed to take over since they are in the majority?

Just for the sake of argument.
Janet

PS: Andrew, those Dante rhymes make me realise how Italianate John Whitworth's rhymes are. Thanks for posting them. A shame you can't say them. The sound is important and non-Italian speakers won't get the wonderful matching sounds.



[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited January 14, 2008).]

[Michael Cantor]

Janet - note that I made a correction in the post you quoted. I mean to say, "most world class bad poets".

[Janet Kenny]

Corrected Michael. I understood your meaning but it's best to be accurate.
Janet

[Roger Slater]

I agree with Michael. What he says is certainly true in the world of children's publishing. I now frequent the boards and blogs in the area, and read lots of interviews of children's editors and agents, and they say pretty much the same thing to aspiring writers. They say "do not write in rhyme," but then, when asked to explain, they pretty much say, "I have no prejudice against rhyme, it's just that the rhyme we get is so bad, and we get so much of it, that we want to spare ourselves having to read through it, so it's a general rule."

If you saw the manuscript exchanges on the children's writing forums, where those who routinely submit manuscripts to publishers often post their work before doing so, you would understand why editors say they don't want to look at rhyme. But then look at their books, and you'll see that many of them rhyme after all.

It's like my attitude toward seafood. I often decline to order seafood because I don't trust the restaurant to serve it fresh, but, if I'm in a good restaurant, I go ahead and order it. My general attitude toward seafood is actually a fear of food poisoning.

[Quincy Lehr]

Oh, there is something uniquely awful about badly rhymed poetry--the distortions to get the rhymes, the obviousness of them, the way that the poorly chosen rhyme word can completely undercut any meaning built up.

And really, rhyme's an obvious poetic device, and at the end of a line, it's pretty easy to identify. Sit through a few open mikes. Particularly in New York City. Listen to the bad rhymed stuff. It is actually worse than unrhymed stuff of similar imaginative and linguistic poverty. The unrhymed stuff just sounds like drivel or stupidity or what have you. You get all that with a godawful rhymed piece, but with the ugliness of a badly used device, often with the language distorted in such a way as to call attention to its ill use.

Quincy

[Andrew Frisardi]

Awful poetry comes in so many packages; bad rhyming simply calls more attention to itself with its sing-song. Here's a good comment on rhyme from Robert Graves, which Anthony Hecht quotes in his essay "On Rhyme":

"Rhyming must come unexpectedly yet inevitably, like presents at Christmas, and convey the comforting sense of free will within predestination."

Andrew

[Roger Slater]

I recently encountered this in a Richard Wilbur essay entitled "The Bottle Becomes New, Too," and I daresay it says well what most of us have sometimes experienced in the writing of our best rhyming efforts.

Rhyme also has the virtue of meaninglessness, and if it is austerely used it has the virtue of difficulty. It is always bad when rhymes write a poem. But rhyme is a device of great formal and magical value, and many writers have demonstrated that it is possible not to let it run away with you. A really rigorous rhyming poet can redeem from banality almost any rhyme in the language, even the perilous cat / rat .

As a matter of fact, it is precisely in its power to suggest comparisons and connections --unusual ones-- to the poet that one of the incidental merits of rhyme may be said to lie. Say to yourself lake, rake, and then write down all the metaphors and other reconciliations of these terms which occur to you within one or two minutes. It is likely to be a long list, extending from visual images of wind furrowing the water, to punning reminiscences of Lancelot and Guinevere. The presence of potential rhymes sets the imagination working with the same briskness and license with which a patient's mind responds to the psychologist's word-association tests. When a poet is fishing among rhymes, he may and must reject most of the spontaneous reconciliations (and all of the hackneyed ones) produced by trial combinations of rhyming words, and keep in mind the preconceived direction and object of his poem; but the suggestions of rhyme are so nimble and so many that it is an invaluable means to the discovery of poetic raw material which is, in the very best sense, farfetched. I hope it is perfectly clear that I am not advocating automatic writing or any such supinity: one may get full suggestive use out of the contemplation of rhymes without letting them write the poem."