Poetry and Short Stories

What is wrong with Rhyme?

The last time I posted a poem, I got the following commentary on it:

"The problem with rhyming poetry, is that it often comes off as forced or slightly skewed. This is what happened here. The rhyme is sound, and I caught it from the offset, but the content does need work. Take 'much' and 'luck', or 'save' and 'blaze''. They don't cut it, to be honest, and I think you know this."

Now I take issue with that above statement because not only was the rhyme not forced, everyone else who read it, enjoyed it.

In reading through a number of articles on the net concerning poetry I've discovered something unpleasant. This same unpleasantness is echoed by various magazines which buy poetry in their writers guide section. What it amounts to is 'don't use rhyme, it's BAD!!!!' though the statement is usually couched in words such as what I've quoted above.

I stopped after reading a writer's guide recently and wondered 'when did it become bad for poetry to rhyme?' I can't put my finger on a date, but that is what has happened.

Some years back, all poetry rhymed and it was 'BAD' for any poem to exist that did not. Then free souls unfettered by the 'experts' insisted on publishing free verse. Poems no longer had to rhyme. They no longer had to have distinct meter or even make sense. In fact, the less a poem made sense, the more it was praised as being some kind of deep, emotional work.

Poppycock.

I have nothing against free verse. I can spout off gibberish as well as anyone else. However it takes a lot more work and thought to create a poem that has correct meter, rhyme and makes sense.

I have to wonder if any of the current 'experts' in the field of poetry ever bothered to read the old masters. Ever heard of Poe? Perhaps you'll recognize this excerpt:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-
Only this, and nothing more."

Can you imagine some modern expert telling Poe that the rhyme in his poem The Raven was forced? or slightly skewed? That the content needed work? I'm sure they did, when he was alive, but I doubt any of the modern experts would dare express such a view.

Or how about Alfred, Lord Tennyson? I assume our experts have heard of him. Here's the first stanza of his Crossing of the Bar

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

The magazine I was considering submitting a poem to would have rejected his work completely. Their writer's guide said 'no rhyme just for the sake of rhyme'. Read that stanza again. You can tell that he very plainly used 'me' so it would rhyme with 'sea'. That's a blatant case of 'rhyme just for the sake of rhyme'.

I leave it to you to do some research, read the classic poems and think. Then the next time you sit down to write, please let the words come as they want to, regardless of what someone else has told you is 'correct'.