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February 15, 2006
Roberts, ch. 13 - Poetic Form
Roberts, Ch. 13 -- Jerz: American Lit II (EL 267)
"Rhyme, above all, gives delight and strengthens interest, and it strengthens a poem's psychological impact."
While I'll bring it in to the discussion if the poem in question is written by someone whose writing I know to be excellent, I place very little stock in rhyme (or in meter, for that matter).
One thing that I've noticed all my life (and that especially irked me in my long-ago days as an editor of my high school's literary magazine) is that many people believe that the single distinguishing attributes of a poem are rhyme and meter. (Especially rhyme, since a lot of the high-school poets whose work I looked at couldn't count well enough to build meter.) These people will, when they try to write poetry, sacrifice all the literature of a poem - all the good, meaty words that mean something - for the sake of rhyme and rhythm. They will use words totally inappropriate to the piece, words that mean nothing or words that mean something waaaay off their intended targets, as long as those words fit in with their rhyme scheme and rhythm. FOr this reason, then, I pay very little attention to rhyme scheme and meter. They just don't matter to me as much as the meanings and connotations of the words that are used. They don't matter because people focus too much on them and not on the real literature of a poem.
Posted by MeganRitter at February 15, 2006 04:53 PM
Comments
While I must agree that rhyme can sometimes be misused or abused, I will admit that as a poet I love to use it. There's something strangely satisfying about writing a poem that makes crafty use of it.
Posted by: ChrisU at February 16, 2006 05:12 AM