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David Dumais
Member
Username: scribbledhopes

Post Number: 56
Registered: 03-2008
Posted on Sunday, April 13, 2008 - 7:39 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Rookie question, but I will play the fool and ask it anyway.

As an artist as well as a poet, I could always appreciate the basics. Some of the finest art I have ever seen was white paint on a black canvas. very simple, but powerful. I have this amazing piece by a local artist over my fireplace that is so beautiful it takes my breathe away when I look at it.

Though there is something to be said for poems with other vehicles to catch pulse I wonder why rhyme is such a red headed step child.

I would like to used all the colors, not just the ones in fashion.

mabye it's poems 101, Rhyme is a sign of a weak poet, but to me, it's just white paint. Another possible color for my canvas.
I am not perfect but the worlds not perfect, so we are a matching set.
~M~
Board Administrator
Username: mjm

Post Number: 29439
Registered: 11-1998
Posted on Sunday, April 13, 2008 - 7:53 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Dear David -- no, not a rookie question. In fact, the topic of rhyme comes up here pretty regularly. I don't think it's a matter of rhyme being a red-headed stepchild. Like many areas unrelated to poetry, different styles come in and go out of fashion. End rhyme, if that's the particular rhyme you're talking about, has never gone completely away, but it is not now the major focus of most poets who prefer free verse. There is still much use of rhyme in poetry -- internal rhyme, alliteration, assonance, etc. And some poets do still work with end rhyme. You just won't see very much of it in comparison to free verse, that's all. But as a language artist, you are certainly free to work with end rhyme if that's what you wish to do. You shouldn't let public opinion or favored trends stop you.

Here are some prior discussions at Wild on the topic of rhyming:

Rhyming -- Yea or Nay?

An Article on End Rhyme

Rhyming Poetry

Maybe reading through those discussions will prove interesting to you until others come to leave their comments. These discussions are from NATUROPATHY, our library forum. There's lots of good information in there on many different topics.

Best,
M
nia sunset
Advanced Member
Username: nia

Post Number: 1355
Registered: 04-2006
Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 - 5:01 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

As an artist as well as a poet, I could always appreciate the basics. Some of the finest art I have ever seen was white paint on a black canvas. very simple, but powerful. I have this amazing piece by a local artist over my fireplace that is so beautiful it takes my breathe away when I look at it.

Hi David,

I loved this one, and this made me think of the freedom of an artist. Actually art gives some forms and some images and even brings some trends as being in times a kind of rules, remember all classical painters and classical art works. We make them categorized. This is this, this is that, etc.

In all my writing life, I never followed any rules or any categorized piece (or whatever you say). I just found myself writing my inner voice. This was my talent, some of my masters told that it was an art in writing. But yes, they wanted me to put in some rules and to form me in some categorized ones too. But I never felt myself good as if they were trying to dress me with an unsize one, and I was feeling that it wasn't me. So I left them, before they left me. yes, I hate to be in kind of minds. It was me and I was establishing myself. But please I don't want you to misunderstand me, I do appreciate and support to have an education about all art world, I mean to know what they did in the past, even for world and even for my own language/literature. The difference of my work, or the new part of all these running art world, should be found by all these walking I think.

About poetry, yes, same! But poetry has a very special field in writing world. Because it has its own poetical sound, its essence of this. So maybe ryhme flows by itself... I never tried to find the right words or the right sound for catching the ryhme, it just flowed from my heart to the papers. I know, I can guess some poets and poet lovers may be wouldn't be glad to hear this. But about second language, I almost take back my words, because in here there is a problem with this, all my talking was about my own language and what I write in my own language. because in this language I try to find the right one always, and I think the poetical touches and the poetical beauties have been gone by working like that and I am not so good for this.

But I support to be free... I want to see the sky lilac and I want to see the trees in blue and maybe moon can be orange and so on... art is something that brings a new images, new touches and new visions... But I smile right now too, my son, he is attending in design course for his master degree(he graduated Architeture university in here), what he learned at the beginining in Italy made me so surprised too, it was this, "nothing important what you design, but how you present, how you offer to the people is so important." Can you imagine this? This is modern world trend I think. everything is changing...

anyway, I hope I didn't talk so much and didn't take your subject in wrong way.

with my love,
nia
http://www.freewebs.com/butterflywingsofnia/
"Carry the beauties;wash the badnesses with your poetical spirit"
Judy Thompson
Advanced Member
Username: judyt54

Post Number: 1105
Registered: 11-2007
Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 - 6:56 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

some poems rhyme, some don't. Good rhyme is a joy, bad rhyme (which a lot of people don't realize usually involves, gasp, meter) is dreadful.

Some poets are very good at it, some think they are. I like a bit of both, and have no problem with doing or reading it-- but for most of what I want to say, free verse is a better fit.

Right now, as M said, unrhymed is king. In five years, or ten, the pendulum well may swing the other way.
Andrew Dufresne
Advanced Member
Username: beachdreamer

Post Number: 1415
Registered: 01-2006
Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 - 12:20 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Rhyme is a sign of a weak poet? My god, that is too absurd to make much of a comment on.

I cannot cut my conscience to fit this year's fashion. Yes, I stole that.

ad
Walter Durk
Intermediate Member
Username: summerguy2007

Post Number: 675
Registered: 10-2007
Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 - 4:04 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Dave , I love rhyme and it is not the sign of weak poet, rather, a strong one.
All that is personal soon rots unless it is packed in ice and salt. -- Yeats
~M~
Board Administrator
Username: mjm

Post Number: 29446
Registered: 11-1998
Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 - 4:21 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Yes, ad, but the real question is can you cut your conscience to fit like a pair of pants to wear when your only pair of pants is in the washer? I've always wondered about that as I don't like walking around naked from the waist down while I'm washing my only pair of pants. *LMAO*

Love,
M
Jane Røken
Advanced Member
Username: magpie

Post Number: 1200
Registered: 03-2007
Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 - 4:40 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

David, I'm right with you here in the colours. And this is a fun question, a fun subject.

But it (the subject) should be no problem.
Judy said it, some poems rhyme, some don't. It's as simple as that.

But there is a god-awful lot of prejudice and superstition abroad concerning rhymed/metered poetry.
Of course there are many examples of really atrocious (ab)use of rhyme & meter; but we have all seen more than a fair share of horribly inept fre-verse too - so for heaven's sake let's do whatever feels right for us, for the moment, for the poem we're writing just now.

Some poems beg for rhyme & meter. Some poems are killed by it. Some poems want a little pinch of it.

What I meant to say, David, your comparison with colours in a painting is spot-on.
Some pictures are best in black & white and simple brush strokes, other pictures may require colours that haven't yet been invented.
It's our business to invent those colours. And if it takes a handful of end rhymes and a whole iambic heptameter to do so ... well then that's what we will do.

Jane
Michael Reed Samford
Member
Username: mikesamford

Post Number: 100
Registered: 03-2008
Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 - 6:05 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

David, I too am a rookie and I too love rhyme, and form, anything from a sonnet to an epigram. However I like many others are poor at rhyme, but it is part of poetry that I fill must be mastered if one wants to master poetry. We all wish we could rhyme like the master of old, but it is hard work and it seem that few ever make the grade. I do feel that if we don’t try we will never succeed, and if we do not post our learning poetry for review, by those who can help, we will never grow and become the writers we strive to be. I plan to post rhyme here and I do think I will get help, but I understand that not all will enjoy it (Maybe less than a few.) But is it not how we learn and why we are here, –I hope.

ps: (You go first!)
I thought at length on the future of man,
for sanity’s sake, I’ll never do that again.
W.F. Roby
Valued Member
Username: wfroby

Post Number: 139
Registered: 03-2008
Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 - 7:50 am:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

This might be a tangent:

What do you think is the difference between lyrics and poems?(I'm not speaking just popular music lyrics -- there are poetry-caliber lyrics to be found)

I mention this here because the rhyme seems to have something to do with it.

Does this have to do with people's desire to read poems "in their head" only, and not out loud? I think a reading, aloud, reveals much about rhyme that reading in your head can't -- this would be like comparing smelling a nice wine in a decanter as opposed to trying to smell through the bottle.

Does this make any sense to anyone? Should I just start a new thread here?

Dazed and confused in Denton, Texas . . .
Anna Brown
Member
Username: tissuetoyou

Post Number: 64
Registered: 11-2007
Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 - 12:10 pm:   Edit Post Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post

Rhyme is not the sign of a weak poet, I don't think. I think bad rhyme is the sign of a weak poet (perhaps just a green poet at times?) but it all depends on what YOU like, not what we like. It's your art, not ours. Readers are just meant to enjoy it, and think of the point you've mad within it. If we don't like it, because it has old-styled rhyme, that not your problem. Sometimes we don't like free-verse, either. Just write the best you can, the way you want to, and it'll be great in one way or another.

(P.S. I haven't been on in forever because my internet isn't working at home. I'm at the library now, so I haven't abandoned wildpoetryforum!)
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Every Imp could be a bastard, but not every bastard need be short.
George R.R. Martin - A Game of Thrones