Why doesn poetry rhyme or need to rhyme anymore??
Poetry does not have to rhyme to be poetry, but it does have to flow. It must still have a rhythm to recite to in order to be poetry. Many will tell you poetry has no rules, they speak of free verse. Free verse also has rules. It still must have flow, and some semblance of continuance to convey a message. Those who say there are no rules either have been told this by someone else who has no idea what poetry is, or they just want any rules to make them look bad when they write garbage. I have read some excellent free verse here, as well as some that was too bad to get past 3 or 4 lines. They tell me I have to take the bad with the good, but I won’t say it’s good if it’s not. Enjoy rhyming poetry if you like it, it is my style of preference, but keep an open mind to find good non-rhyming poetry as well.
Rhyme can hamper a good poem because the writer is restricted by form. Structure applies to certain types of poetry, of course, such as sonnets or limericks. Modern poetry, in English, is more effective if written as one would speak. Line breaks and punctuation (if used) give blank verse or free verse its cadence. There are rules for some unrhymed poetry, haiku for example. But, for other poetry, especially free verse, rules are set aside, leaving the poet *free* to express himself/herself. These days, few editors will ever consider rhyming poetry. Modern working poets know this and write accordingly. By studying a publication, a poet knows the magazine’s style requirements. It makes things easier.
Many people feel that the use of rhyme restricts language and forces the poet to use words that simply happen to rhyme instead of thinking of the best possible ones – although I think reading Burns, Rossetti or Yeats should show that’s not the case at all! I think a lot of it comes down to trends – as a poet I constantly see examples of how elitist (and sometimes downright pretentious) the poetry world can be. In Bukowski’s novel Women, he hides under the table when a girl he’s seeing starts reciting rhyming verse; something I’ve heard quoted by a lot of “anti-rhymists”! Of course, poetry, like any art, should evolve and free verse has been a great leap forward and produced some incredible work. Rhyme is still used in modern poetry (Wendy Cope being a notable example), but has been relegated to the status of the “smelly kid in class” by some of the powers that be of poetry. It’ll change again though, these trends always do.
.Poetry does not have to “flow,” as Doudy puts it; I don’t know why he made such an absurd claim. Defining poetry is a subjective thing, it is art, it is not math, where 4+4 always = 8; I don’t think anyone can put a one size fits all definition to poetry. If Walt Whitman can’t define poetry as he speaks of in “Leaves of Grass,” then I don’t think anyone here can. Poets, do not let people dictate to you what your art is and isn’t. It is your art! I don’t mind if he says his art is not poetry if it doesn’t flow, but I do mind when he tells me what my art needs to be in order to be called poetry. We all get to decide personal rules for ourselves! For me, my art needs to communicate something in order to be poetry. Anyways in regards to the main question, part of the reason a lot of poets don’t rhyme or use fixed form anymore is because many modern poets and readers shifted their interests towards image and metaphor. In America Image and metaphor gained a lot of traction in the late 19th/
