So, if anyone has rhyming poetry posted...please let me know!

~Bitter Irony

There are things that contribute to the sonics & music of poetry other than rhyme.

Yes, but rhyming is the most obvious :-). And the easiest to do, which is why I'm amazed at the number of people who don't even try.

If one doesn't have a rhyme, one should at least have a meter. It doesn't have to be something massively obvious, but just a sublte pattern in the number of words per line.

And, if meter proves too difficult...one should at least have new and interesting ideas. Or otomotopea. :-) Whichever.

~Bitter Irony

PS Thanks for the links, steev, I'll go check them out.

It truly is a shame that many don't find the need to keep to a rhyme scheme, or even another set of rules. While perhaps a poem without these qualities is more free, it is also confined by a lack of creativity in most cases. I think only after someone is challenged by something like a rhyme scheme can one truly reach into the recesses of their minds and pull out the best work.

I think that the idea of meter is bunk. To say that there are only two stress levels (or to just rope it into two) in the English language is ridiculous.

I think the music of words is entirely dependent upon rhyme (of all kinds), alliteration, assonance, enjambment, congruence throughout the poem, & the sounds of words in concordance with what emotion or sense their definitions denote. There are a few other things, of course, but they're not major.

I agree with you that enjambment and congruence are also important to the poem (and alliteration/assonance to some extent, though when it reaches tongue-twister level, it's just silly). And you have an excellent point about concordance between words and what they're expressing. A question, then. What is more imporant to a poem: the meaning of the words, or the way they sound? "Black" and "Raven" mean basically the same thing, only "Raven" has a more romantic connotation: but suppose I want the word to rhyme with "lack"? A petty example, I know, but I'd like some other opinions on this one.

Myself, personally? I'd prefer the poem to sound good. People can generally work out the meaning of the words on their own, but once the sound it tossed, all you have is prose without paragraphs.

~Bitter Irony

One can have dense alliteration & assonance without making it difficult to say; one needs to pay careful attention & actually read their work aloud, though. Gerard Manley Hopkins is an excellent example of this. For a specific example, "king-/dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon" isn't a tongue twister in the least, & is incredibly musical.

Clarity of meaning (& actually having one) is more important, but one shouldn't ignore sonics either. That's too much like one of those cheap hollow chocolate eggs (or bunnies). Frank O'Hara's "Poem" is cute & pretty, but there's nothing actual to it but its lightness. Meaning alone or sonics alone won't make a great poem; it takes both.

For debates of this nature, I like to employ a favorite metaphor of mine:

I equate poetry to painting. All painting is creative, but what distinguishes a six-year-old fingerpainter from DaVinci and Michelango is this: Skill, discipline, and meticulous attention to detail. A poem with creativity but no structure is like a kindergarten fingerpainting. It's pretty, and there's nothing wrong with it, but it's not as impressive as a work that took more time and planning.

On the other hand, a poem with perfect structure and no creativity is like one of those Rennaissance portraits of rich women in stuffy dresses: Good, but boring as hell.

It's important for a poet to combine both of these elements in their work.

Okay, that was pretty random. But it's true: I don't care for the Elizabethian sonnets, and I don't like modern poetry at all. I'm an 1850s--1900s sort of person when it comes to aesthetics.

Anyone else have a prefered time period?

By the way, Bragi, nice metaphor. Now everytime I get myself into one of these debates, I'm going to want to steal it. I promise, I shall restrain myself. :-)

~Bitter Irony

It's a fetish of mine; I have to make up metaphors for nearly everything. It annoys my friends and English classmates.

Well a lot of them.

~why hate on your brothers and sisters?

~Poem of the day written on 6/6/06

~Seven stars each

~Alo Mr. President

~Falling in Never

~To Abort Abortion

yup those are it. They are pretty early works.

But I think as you write more and more rhyming isn't as fun anymore. I like to experiment with format more to create interesting poems such as in

~Hurricane

and

~Muerte de un Imagen

-Written in Ink, not Set in Stone

-With us or Against us

-The Boy Who Wasn't Grey

-Six Minute Epic

-Muttface

What would constitute a "spontaneous nature" in regards to poetry? & for reference, what poem do you think would be an exemplary example of a spontaneously written poem?

One position I've heard taken by those who argue in favor of this is that revision, or time spent working on poetry, somehow dilutes some kind of special essence or quality that poetry that is spontaneously written possesses that revised (or planned, or worked-on) writing does not. They usually cite the Beats as references, even though the talented Beat poets (Ginsberg & Corso, & to a lesser extent, McClure & Ferlinghetti) would revise & otherwise labor over their poetry (or, at the least, their good poetry). Poems such as Kaddish, Sunflower Sutra, Howl, Marriage, & Bomb went through multiple stages of revision. Sometimes, an exceptionally talented poet can eke out a decent poem in a short amount of time ("without as much time and planning", but that's fairly rare).

One cannot pin down painting or poetry to any particular creed or set of rules.

Great poems written by different poets have more in common with each other than a great poem of one poet compared to a mediocre poem by the same poet. The quality of poetry is not subjective; personal taste might well be, but quality is something that is concrete & can be determined.

Most creeds (I take your use of this to mean the different schools or -isms of poetry that popped up in the 20th century & beyond) are little more than thinly veiled systems of apologetics for the poor quality of the poetry produced. There are exceptions, but the exceptions never actually follow the rules that their creed says they do.

~Bitter Irony

Some that I especially like are Rainer Maria Rilke, Robinson Jeffers, Hart Crane, Robert Hayden, John Berryman, Wallace Stevens, Philip Larkin, & Weldon Kees. There're more, but I don't especially like to list things without discussing them, & that would be an even bigger digression.

In short, any attempt to scientifically study art will inevitably miss some of the beauty of a poem.

I think my favorites on that list are Hart Crane, Philip Larkin, and Robinson Jeffers.

Feel free to discuss you favorites as much as you like, I do it all the time. :-)

~Bitter Irony

To darkstar-rising: I understand you, and am now in danger of agreeing with everybody in this forum! :-) Ars gratia artis, and all that. I don't think recognizing "great" poetry will ever be down to a science, mostly because too many post-modernists show up and insist that their work is "great". But for the most part, what steev said certainly applies to the poems by poets you see listed in the encyclopedia with "commonly thought to be the greatest poet in the English language" next to their name.

The irony is that those with "commonly thought to be the greatest poet in the English language" I tend to find insufferably boring.

Robert Frost is a great poet. I don't like most of his poems, mostly because of their rustic tone/subjects; however, I can recognize the greatness of them even though my personal taste doesn't find him appealing. The same thing goes for Eliot, with me, though for different reasons.

Regarding Rilke, I don't speak German, either. With translation, I think the most important thing is the quality of the poem produced in English, or whatever language you're translating to, & not the "honesty" of the translation. Though he's occasionally accused of being unfaithful to the text, I think Stephen Mitchell is Rilke's best translator & an excellent one in general.

& Robinson Jeffers doesn't get near the amount of love he deserves.

Second, at the risk of being off-topic, is anyone else here reminded of the movie "Dead Poet Society"?

There is a scene in the beginning when the sudents are reading about a mathematical graphing technique to "measure the greatness of a poem", and Robin Williams' character tells them to rip that page out of the book, and much mayhemm ensues... sigh. Good movie.

I would entirely disagree. Hughes' "claim to fame" was more to do with his Poet Laureate status than this wife's death, and he was one of the most important poets of his day. Armitage, although you dismiss him as "bad to mediocre", is one of the most prominent poets today. My point was that they are almost nothing alike, despite having prominent work in their time.

I spoke out against "testable hypotheses" (set "rules" [such as Eliot's Objective Correlative]), myself; my point is that greatness is measurable through comparison, & there are concrete things (usage of cliches, music, etc.) that one can determine the quality of (by comparison, as previously stated), & therefore the poem- & how would this be worth little value, since these things are part of the poem (& therefore the whole)?

Holy supernatural non-entities Batman; that's a monstrosity of a sentence! Provided I've not misunderstood you, I put it to you that if greatness is achieved through comparison, one must still have some set "rules" for how great said poetry is. You identified use of cliche and music. While I wouldn't disagree that one needs criteria for which to begin analysis of the work, I disagree that one can objectively ascertain greatness from it. All art, inherently, is subjective, and therefore what constitutes greatness in simply personal choice. Any attempt otherwise is simply an attempt to impose one set of values over all others, and it tends toward an "artistic fascism" that I find abhorrent.

Robert Frost is a great poet. I don't like most of his poems, mostly because of their rustic tone/subjects; however, I can recognize the greatness of them even though my personal taste doesn't find him appealing. The same thing goes for Eliot, with me, though for different reasons.

I am not arguing that one must "like" to "appreciate".

On the contrary, that is what is being implied, I feel.

I put it to you that if greatness is achieved through comparison, one must still have some set "rules" for how great said poetry is

Well, aside from objective observation, no. A cliche is a cliche based on how often it has been used, music is able to be determined (what sounds good or not is something that is real), bad line breaks are obviously bad line breaks because we can show how they're detrimental & what a good one is, & so on. I do not see how one could assert that Ginsberg's "Sphincter" is superior to "Howl" (for example), simply because it isn't, & demonstratably so. It doesn't require a system of rules that exists outside of what is actual in poetry that has been written.

I disagree that one can objectively ascertain greatness... All art, inherently, is subjective...

I could agree if you were that how we experience art is subjective, but I don't see how the the quality is subjective. A subjective viewpoint of art fosters a "everything is good" (one cannot criticize) ethic that is more often than not used to justify or apologize for a poem- just as the various schools of poetry do. That leads into a "if nothing is bad, then nothing is good" stance which is, I feel, ridiculous.

I am not arguing that one must "like" to "appreciate".

I'm not stating appreciation, really, but that my opinion does not have an effect on the quality of the work.

The topic of this forum is NOT:

1. What constitutes a good poem.

2. Who has the right to say what's good and what is'nt.

3. Whether the quality of a poem is even measurable.

We have to assume that everyone on this page is speaking out of their own opinion. If I say "There Once was a Man from Nantucket" is my favorite poem in the world, then it's my favorite poem in the world. Obviously, that's debatable, but my right to have an opinion is not.

The topic of this forum is "Rhyme and Reason", so a discussion on what constitutes a good poem is perfectly acceptable. The "what do you like best in a poem" topic is on another thread. This thread started out being about rhyme, and turned into a whole something different. If steev, darkstar-rising and anybody else invovled in this debate would like to create a new topic for it, that's perfectly fine.

~Bitter Irony

The last paragraph of my post still stands, though. It's the presence of conflicting opinions that makes a debate. One shouldn't have to preface one's statement with, "Well, this is just my personal opinion, and I recognize that art is subjective, but I think that..."

Rhyme was never an art--really--anyone can do it. I did it once, for four hours (no joke), wrote a poem ten pages long like that, in quartets. Rhyming wasn't the hard part, it was getting the meter down.

Oddly enough, a poem that rhymes but has no meter doesn't even sound good--it's just complete crap. The first poems written were all about the meter, later, after people recognized the lyrical quality of rhyme, it became much more commonplace.

I mean to say rhyme on its own--with no semblance of meter or rhythm--is complete crap--it'd be like Eminem on down syndrome.

Yea, but to do it effectively is the trick. Yes, anyone can rhyme. But it's not just rhyming, it's the flow, and the meaning, and choosing the right word at the right time that make the poem good. "Jack and Jill" is rhyming, poetry is much more.

Also, if a haiku is crafted correctly (ie not a seventeen syllable sentence split up into three lines) it can be quite striking. I take it you've never read a good one?

Plus Shakespeare is most certainly not the be all and end all of rhyme or meter. Try Maria Rainer Rilke or Pablo Neruda. Two contemporaries who mastered the sonnet form to make it their own. Or Dylan Thomas' villanelles. Even better look up poets who have created their own verse forms, like the pleiadic by Vera Rich.

Also, achieving a good meter is much harder than rhyming. Same with correct line breaks. So many amateur poets use them horrendously.

haiku is the same...it just does nothing for me

As for Shakespeare there is a reason that everyone knows the Bard's name...yes other people have written sonnets but when sonnets are mentioned Shakespeare and Petrarch are the names that come to mind...this is because they are masters...Masters like Michelangelo...when sculpture is mentioned that name comes to mind...there are other credible painters writers etc obviously... but there is a reason names like Divinci Frost Yeat Keats Joyce and Hemingway are household names...they are the best of the best...people whose creations call thunder from the sky...the names that are immortal and whose creations will forever hold a place in history

yes other talent exists but not on par with the Titans...if they belonged in the same catagory their names would be known

as for people who become innovative and create their own verse...there is much more to say for a poet that is able to maintain the strict rules of a style and still convery a powerful and profound message

the point i was previously making is that ryhme has just as important a place as meter and that each can be equally abused by hacks...I stand by my defense

Read the poets I mentioned. Thomas was famous for his villanelles, he mastered that form. You're obviously not reading enough.

Those writers are famous because they're talented, true but there are many talented writers that aren't as famous because they aren't as readily accessible or were writing at the same time as other most "famous" writers. Shakespeare's infamy has compounded over time, there are other fantastic Elizabethean writers but they get lost in his shadow. Just because something is a "household name" doesn't mean they necessarily deserve the title.

While I agree that the pleiadic is a very interesting (note, I don't say wonderful) form, just because something is difficult to work with does NOT make the creater clever. If I created a new type of computer that was more difficult to work with, I doubt people would call me clever: but the people who did not create the form, but still managed to do wonderful things with it, would be seen as the smarter and cleverer ones, because they managed to follow rules they did not create, and still do something brilliant with it.

To the earlier mentioned quote about hacks abusing meter--to be honest, I don't truely see how this could be done, except, perhaps, by the addition of extra syllables and stress to lines that normally wouldn't have them. I understand quite well how rhyme can be misused: meter just takes too much effort to be done by somebody who isn't trying.

Rich created probably the best pleiadic's that I read and I think it was an ingenious way of working. It's easy to create a shoddy form to write in (I've seen it done too many times) but it's much harder to create something that albeit difficult reads very well.

You may read the poems here.

www.bebo.com/PoetryOfMyLife

I try to make it rhyming but I tend to focus on the emotion...

Most of my poetry is rhyming, but in basic forms. I'm tending now to spread out my usuall writing techniques, but if you wish to read, Revelation is my favoured rhyming poem.

Thanks for looking =)

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