Does Poetry Have To Rhyme?

[Tesco in Disguise]

i do not think you have to be gay to enjoy poetry and would like to think i enjoy it as much as most people but, for me, to be truly great poet, you must be able to convey the sentiment, passion and emotion of a poem whilst working within the constraints of rhyme. i thought i would put this to the intellectual powerhouse that is nsc to find out whether i've missed the point.

 

[Biscuit]

Horn of Plenty - Tony Harrison is superb!

And no, poems don't have to rhyme.

 

[Biscuit]

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son.


(this one is rather good and it rhymes...)

 

[fatbadger]

Of course they don't. 'Paradise Lost' - the single greatest piece of literature in the English language - is a case in point. And if you don't want to take my word for it, here are Milton's own words, published as part of the prefatory material to the 2nd, twelve-book edition:

"The Measure is English Heroic Verse without Rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and Virgil in Latin; Rhime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter; grac't indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom, but much to thir own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse then else they would have exprest them. Not without cause therefore some both Italian, and Spanish Poets of prime note have rejected Rhime both in longer and shorter Works, as have also long since our best English Tragedies, as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, triveal, and of no true musical delight; which consists onely in apt Numbers, fit quantity of Syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one Verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoyded by the learned Ancients both in Poetry and all good Oratory. This neglect then of Rhime so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar Readers, that it rather is to be esteem'd an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recover'd to heroic Poem from the troublesom and modern bondage of Rimeing."

 

[fatbadger]

Tony Harrison

The greatest living English poet.

 

[mejonaNO12 aka riskit]

yep...otherwise it is talking.

 

[dougdeep]

Why would it need rules?

 

[Gwylan]

Of course not, Shakespeare used blank verse in all his players - he rarely used rhyme.

 

[Tesco in Disguise]

Of course not, Shakespeare used blank verse in all his players - he rarely used rhyme.

shakespeare was a playwrite.

 

[crasher]

shakespeare was a playwrite.

You mean - Shakespeare was a playwrite, innit.

 

[¡Cereal Killer!]

i hate poetry

 

[Gwylan]

shakespeare was a playwrite.

Yeah, and he wrote his plays in verse.
(or mostly anyway)

 

[Brovion]

Of course poetry must rhyme,
Otherwise it is a crime,
Anyone can write a verse,
Where the last line doesn't rhyme or even scan properly.

So there. Poets that don't rhyme are poets who are too lazy to think properly. Similies and metaphors are no substitute for good rhyming couplets. Also while we're on the subject modern art is for phoneys who can't draw and what's the point of a tune you can't whistle?

Gotta go now, my bottle of Matteus Rose is getting warm and flat.

 

[Brovion]

Yeah, and he wrote his plays in verse.
(or mostly anyway)

And a lot of it in iambic pentameter. "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!"

PS what's a 'playwrite'? Some new kids toy shop?

 

[Yorkie]

Shakespeare also wrote sonnets.

 

[attila]

Can do, doesn't have to.

Good job Shakespeare didn't write haikus.

Because, as the great Johnny Clarke says,


'To convey one's emotions
in seventeen syllables
is very
diffic'

 

[Biscuit]

The greatest living English poet.

Not just English.. probably the greatest living in the world.

Oh and cereal, you do like poetry.. you just havn't found the right poem yet..

 

[pasty]

Of course it has to rhyme....otherwise "There was a young man from Nantucket" wouldn't be funny.

 

[Easy 10]

Writers who are short of time
Scribe poetry thats lacks in rhyme
Whilst those who's writing skills are frail
Write nonsense for the Daily Mail

 

[bhafc99]

Of course it doesn't. That's like saying a painting has to replicate a real-life scene to be a painting.