Young Writers Society

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Hahaha... not a poem. I'm moving this to "poetry discussion."

PLEASE learn to post in the right section (Thanks for moving it snoink)

But to the argument: Can you write good rhyming poetry? Can you write good free verse? Can you even write good poetry? I ask because no one should complain unless they can say they know what they're talking about....

Not all rhyming sucks. Forced rhyming does suck. But how do you tell the difference between that, and a good rhyme? I'm not sure, to be honest, but if it sounds natural, and flows, and the rhyme doesn't obscure anything, then it's good.

Bad rhyme:

I like this guy named Matt
Because he has a kitty cat.
But his kitty cat bit me
So I stapled it to a tree.

Kind of violent... anyway. It's forced. I think when they say forced, they mean you twisted the poem, it's meaning, and possible beauty just to rhyme. That's when you are at fault. If you cannot rhyme two lines (or more?) without writing a bad line, then change the rhyming word.

I'll take two verses from a poem I wrote:

Sade, daring cupid of this tale,
Lay under a tree and its veil
Of rouge flower and gold leaf.

Who came to sit by his side?
Who else but his lovely bride,
Wishing the talk to be brief.

I worked very hard to come up with a rhyme (and rhythm) that worked. I sacrificed none of the poems beauty to make it work; if something went wrong, I scrapped the whole couplet/verse, and started over. That's how it works.


Forced rhyming is the nastiest thing known to rhyming poetry. It just is. You can't say "Don't complain about rhyming" because we don't (I'm not even sure I'm a part of this we?) but when you are murdering a poems possible beauty just so it will rhyme, you need to change something.

On many of the rhyming poems I have read almost everyone has commented on "forced rhyme" or things like "your poetry would sound better if you write free verse."

did you ever think that maybe you are just reading poor poetry? You have to consider who is writing it, and how much experience they have had. Perhaps it just wasn't good poetry.

BTW: not all lyrical poetry is the only kind that rhymes. The majority of my poetry rhymes, and it is far from being lyrical poetry. So don't categorize.

Hope to hear how you respond to this...

Rhyme itself is not bad: the problem is that many poets - especially inexperienced ones - seem to think that any rhyme is better than no rhyme at all, and they're absolutely wrong.

The truth is that using rhyme properly is absolutely not an amateur poetic skill - it requires a basic understanding of the reasons why poets use rhyme, some indication of what it does to affect the reader and, above all, some experience of different types of rhyme. Most beginners think that as long as it rhymes, it enhances the poem, when it's the other way around - using the 'obvious' rhyme, the perfect rhyme that everyone could see coming a mile off does not work, it usually makes the poem worse.

Claudette has shown the first step on using rhyme effectively - she's chosen absolutely/obvious rhymes that aren't cliche and that add beauty to them poem. However, this isn't where a poet needs to stop - using obvious rhymes all the time, no matter how beautiful, just forces the reader to recognise the fact that it rhymes, it doesn't add to the poem in any way. The next step is to use discreet and subtle rhyming - "blue/wool" for example, or "flies/hides", rhymes that aren't complete and aren't so obvious. Only with these kind of subtleties will you be able to use rhyme effectively to its full potential.

So that's why we hate rhyme - it sucks unless you can use it properly, and most people can't.

I don't suppose either style is 'better' when it comes to poetry.

There ARE many writers who try to rhyme their poetry and fail miserably. But we shouldn't think that they all stink. It depends completely upon the author. I think we ought to like/dislike the piece according to the quality, not the style. If a poem is well written, if it flows well, if it isn't forced, then praise it, free verse or no. There are blunders which anyone can make, in either style.

Personally, I can't write free verse to save my life. That's why I've posted only rhymes. I'm sure my pieces aren't the best, but if not, it's a discredit to me, and not to rhyming poetry.

Like almost anything, Free verse, and Rhyming poems come in and out of style, as do clothes, music ect... Right free verse is what everyone is writing, but if you write lyrical poems, consider it your off season (if your an an athlete), spend the time perfecting you work, and getting rid of forced rhyme. The Lyrical will come back into popularity, it's only a matter time. It all follows a patter, like 80's clothing

Part of the difference between a smooth, poetic rhyme and a forced rhyme is syllables. If you can't automatically if the syllables in each line are the same from the way the poem sounds, try counting them out.

Here's an example of what I mean.

Not So Great Rhyme:
An enraptuing sound of silence just barely heard
A whisper close to a spoken word
As dawn does gently tread
I loose what the blue bird sings in my head

Better Rhyme:
A sound of silence barely heard
A whisper like a spoken word
As for the dawn does gently tread
I loose the bird song in my head

It is also important to make sure words actually rhyme and don't just 'half rhyme'. For example, ponder and wander rhyme, but wander and wonder or ponder and wonder only 'half rhyme'. This is just what I have noticed in poetry. But, if you really want to write rhyming poetry and aren't happy with the feed back you've been getting, try it and see what happens.

Poetry is, in my opinion, a stream of words that explore the poet's feelings or any number of other things that could be on his/her mind. With that said, an important aspect of that stream of words are the flow and rhythm in which they emerge.
And that's where rhyme comes in. If rhyme fits the flow of the piece naturally and elegantly and seemed an essential part of the poem when you first thought of it, that's fine. Use it, coz it's useful. On the other hand, if freeverse seemed a more appropriate technique, by all means use that too. Neither styles are 'better' or 'worse'. They're just different.
And for people who claim that free verse is 'better' and think rhyme is inferior, that's just snobbery, and should be dismissed strongly. After all, weren't the great Shakespere's sonnets nearly all rhyming? Point made.

Oh, and by the way, why do people think lyric poetry when they think rhyming poetry? They're two completely different things!!!

I'm one of the editors of my school's literary magazine, and we get a lot of what seem to be the two antagonists of this thread, bad rhyming poetry, and careless free verse. My school has another magazine specifically for poetry and art, and in one edition it had 34 free verse poems, most of them horrible, and one rhyming one, which was about Iassic Newton meeting god, and awesome.

I think that it's more difficult to pull a rhyming poem to the same level as free verse, so you get a lot of really bad rhyming poems and a few really fantastic ones. It is easier to achieve descriptive beauty in free verse, but adding a good rhyme scheme to a poem elevates it above an otherwise equal example of free verse.

PLEASE do not comment on lyric poetry if you hate the way it sounds anyway

Maybe I'm just out of the loop, but I didn't know lyric poetry was required to rhyme.

It's not the general genre of poetry that I'm sure people aren't fond of, but as mentioned above, it's often the execution of such. That's one of the plethora of reasons why people crit. To point out things that might not work as well as others. If they're pointing out something in the rhyme scheme, I'm almost positive that it's not because they don't like poetry that rhymes, but because they feel that it wasn't executed as well as it could have been.

On a similar note, some poems just don't lend themselves to rhyming as well as others might. [will make a *grimace* fashion analogy:] Say someone wanted to wear a pair of green pants and an orange shirt. You might like the clothes themselves, just not the color. Now, there might not be anything stopping that person from walking out the door looking like a pumpkin, but I'd bet they'd appreciate someone saying "you might want to wear a blue shirt instead".

*shrug* just another way of looking at things.

As many before me have said--rhyming itself is not inherently bad. The problem is that most amateur poets assume that all poetry must rhyme and therefore he or she might force the lines to conform to a certain standard, resulting in a teeth-clenching, wince-inducing travesty of poetry.

Basically--if the rhyme comes naturally, or cleverly, or smoothly, then go with it. If it doesn't? Go free verse. Neither is wrong, but rhyming is harder to get right, which is what makes it so much worse that the less experienced (i.e., bad, amateur, too-young, etc) poets lean on it so heavily.

I have nothing against rhyming poetry when it's done well. I've actually read some breathtaking poems which rhyme. However, I will admit that I encourage those who write bad rhyming poetry to try free verse. Why? Because I often find that said rhyming poets are those who twist their poetry to fit the rhyme and totally munt whatever meaning their words may have had. And not only do I hate that personally, but I think their poetry suffers from it. So I suggest they liberate themselves from constricting rhyme schemes and explore their creativity with free verse, at least until they have a better understanding of rhythm and technique