[stephenspower]

I got into formal poems by writing sonnets. I like how they can be stanzaed: 4/4/4/2, 8/6, 4/4/3/3, etc. So I really took to rhyme royal later because it offered the same type of breaks but in miniature: 4/3, 2/2/3, 3/2/2, 2/3/2, 5/2, etc.

Ottava rima, on the other hand, has consistently frustrated me. It can be broken down in as many units as rhyme royal, but there's something, well, square about it (or, mathematically, cubic). Perhaps it's the odd number of lines in rhyme royal, but that scheme seems to push the reader down through terminal couplet to the next stanza, building momentum, whereas the terminal couplet in ottava rima seems to lock the stanza (mine, at least) together like a crystal and isolate it.

What are your most and least preferred rhyme schemes?