poems that rhyme and poems that don't

Rothiemurchus

Most people prefer poems that rhyme. Why is this?

raolduke

Most poems that you read ryhme.. I personally don't like direct rhyming schemes. I really like slanted rhyme (note isaac brock) But there are many writers out there that don't follow traditional ryhming schemes.. The reason why poems rhyme? - in other languages words rhyme nicer, english is pretty confusing. My best way to explain is because people dont like reading paragraphs, they'd rather be reading stanzas : P I also think that rhyming words that relate to ideas you are expressing takes a higher level of thinking

Gokul43201

I personally find poetry that isn't encumbered by meter or rhyme to often be more powerful. Poems that maintain meter and a rhyme scheme are, however, better for conveying humor.

arildno

It depends on the poet. It is a lot more difficult to get a powerful effect out of a rhyming poem than out of a non-rhyming one.

Thus, one might say that those poets that DO get something powerful out of rhymes are more accomplished than those poets who are unable to do so.

picklefeet

I write poetry, and the only time I write one that rhymes is when I'm not trying to convey an important message. But on the subject of the initial question, I feel that rhyming poems are more pleasant because, in most cases, it seems like a song sung acopella (I don't think I spelled that correctly) and with feeling. While a non-rhyming poem sounds like you're reading a short story. True, it's usually read by rhythm, but because they usually convey a serious meaning, people don't enjoy them as much.

Heidijr

I also write poetry, and I find it much harder to write a poem that rhymes and still means something. I think poets like that -- poets like Yeats, Poe, and Blake, not to mention the Bard himself are extraordinary.

marcus

I agree with some of what was said in these three posts---maybe most of it.

For me poetry is a VOCAL art, it is spoken and listened to (reading is secondary) and one test of a good short poem is whether it is MEMORABLE, so the words could pop into your mind while you were taking a walk, or at the beach, or just staring out the window.
So poetry is defined (as distinct from prose or like Picklefeet said, a short story) partly by potential for recitation.

Verse, for me, is poetry with some kind of FORM or pattern that the listeners can recognize and hear in real time. That depends on their culture, that they've grown up with. Japanese can hear a HAIKU pattern which depends on a definite number of syllables, but does not need rhyme. Greek and Roman poetry didn't rhyme. It was metrical based on long and short vowells. Greek and Roman poetry did not use stress or accent to define metric.

so it did not have rhyme and it did not have stress-metric rhythm, but it was highly patterned. And the listeners could recognize and appreciate the pattern in real time as they were hearing the poem.

It just happens that a lot of poetry in European languages has rhyme and stress-metric (the pattern of loud and soft syllables). And many of us have grown up with that and can hear and enjoy the pattern.

You might say the tradition goes on one way or another. Whether or not academic poets use rhyme, you find a lot of Broadway show songs and popular songs use it. Who is to say some of that stuff isn't serious in it's own way, or that it won't be remembered?

So I'm interested in how the tradition of poetry in English is evolving and I'm trying to assess the situation by asking what great rhymed metric poetry came about in 1950-2000, the second half of the Twentieth. Here is a thread with a sample
http://physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=244079

jingleman

I think people prefer poems that rhyme because rhymes have a sense of form and people feel comfortable with form. That's why most songs stick to a particular form also (verse, chorus, verse etc.)

It doesn't necessarily make them better or worse, but it does add something. All of my poems rhyme! ;)