[Maryann Corbett]

Thanks, all, for these further examples. Another one that occurs to me, although its rhyme scheme is irregular, is Amy Lowell's "Patterns."

Gregory, thanks for pointing me to the McNeice. (I had read KEB's essay, but I haven't yet read all of "Autumn Journal.") I want to think more about the different expectations I find I have with quatrains as opposed to couplets, and about the effect of differences in line length.

Jerome, I think another reason that this Nash is so prosey is that an absence of poetry--almost a tin ear for it--in this piece suits his purposes. The poem purports to be dismissing the worth of simile and metaphor, so it almost obliges itself to be colorless.

Janice, I think I have to read more Stevie Smith!

[Susan McLean]

Maryann,
Have you looked at Garrison Keillor's 77 Love Sonnets? I just started reading them. Though most of them rhyme, full or slant, they tend not to be metrical or else are so loosely metrical that they feel more like free verse than like metrical verse. I guess that since he is known as a talker, he feels more comfortable with speech rhythms, though that may also be his nod to keeping his sonnets "contemporary." Anyway, there are lots of possible reasons for his choices, but you should look at the effects.

Susan

[Julie Steiner]

Here's another of Alicia's:

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2...day-1243206233

The slow realization that every line of the poem actually rhymes is akin to the magic of watching the dancer move from "fearsome self-possession" to the "possession of her self / By a vaster power".

Nothing Nash-like here, with regard to lightness.

[Maryann Corbett]

Susan, I'll look at some more of Keillor's sonnets, now that my expectations are adjusted. I picked up the book (in the bookstore he helps support, Common Good Books) and was put off by the looseness of meter. I'll give it another shot.

Julie, thanks for that link; the Irish dancer poem was new to me. The hiddenness of those rhymes--the fact they're too far separated to chime easily and too irregular to be expected--seems to me an opposite technique to the one used in the reunion poem, in which the rhymes are the poetic element we notice first. And although the lines in the dancer poem are of different lengths (dimeter to heptameter), all are pretty strictly iambic, with few substitutions, so that the dancer poem feels much more metrical and controlled to me than does the reunion poem. And the notion of control clearly fits the subject.

It seems obvious, but maybe it's worth noting: the farther apart rhymes are, the less force they have and the less they control everything else in the poem. Thus the less overwhelming nature of MacNeice's quatrains.

Still mulling; thanks for these contributions.

[Susan McLean]

Maryann, I didn't mean to imply that I like the effect of Keillor's unmetrical rhymed sonnets. Where they work, they work, I think, in spite of their unmetrical quality and not because of it. I just thought you wanted to see some examples of contemporary poems using that technique. Some of his sonnets are in couplet form, and most end with couplets.

Susan

[Quincy Lehr]

Originally Posted by Susan McLean

But I quickly realized that it is an effect that tends to be scorned by both camps, the formalist and the free verse.

This is rather the nub of it, I think. Techniques that do not clearly align with a particular school in the U.S. tend to get scorned--not so much openly (I've managed to get a few rhymed, un-metered things into print)--but as a matter of perception. It's a real problem with the way the po-biz gets sliced and diced.

Quincy

[Maryann Corbett]

Susan, I did understand. I take your point, and Quincy's, that the result of rhyme-without-meter tends not to fit the assigned categories--largely because I see that there's no right place to post what I've come up with. Nor can I think of an editor who wouldn't scratch his head over it. I'll probably be working now to nudge it closer to meter.

Further examples welcome, however, with thanks.

[Andrew Frisardi]

Are you just looking for contemporary examples?

If not, some of Eliot fits the bill--e.g., the second part of The Dry Salvages. There’s a “ghost” of accentual verse in it, as well as other meters, but it varies enough to qualify as free-ish verse, and it rhymes.

Lawrence Durrell used rhyme in some of his free verse.

[Quincy Lehr]

Unmetered rhyming poetry is, of course, very common in the performance/slam scene.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Maryann, try a UK mag. They know Stevie.