Achebe wrote in a critique:

Quote:The combination of iambic tetrameter, couplet form, and end stoped lines doesn't work so well. It's hard not to sound cliched and staccato as a result, particularly because all perfect rhymes in rhyme poor English have been done to death.

It's more challenging than Spanish where there are ten Rhymes total. Does noise rhyme with voice? Sometimes, what makes it interesting for me is always the context

(10-17-2016, 07:29 PM)ellajam Wrote:  Achebe wrote in a critique:

Quote:The combination of iambic tetrameter, couplet form, and end stoped lines doesn't work so well. It's hard not to sound cliched and staccato as a result, particularly because all perfect rhymes in rhyme poor English have been done to death.

Yet everyone is always very pleased with internal rhyme, assonance, and alliteration - of which end-rhymes are only a special case.  It's sort of like the 1959 (I think it was) Chevrolet, which - with only a set of options that could be printed in a small catalog - could produce a number of distinct combinations larger than the number of particles in the universe.  (Some, it's true, very ugly and unwanted.)  If I had to critique the critics of (end-)rhyme (or even of forms) I might say they're annoyed by rules generally, not the limitations and lack of surprise they allege.

As for iambic tetrameter, I read long ago that it's a sort of genetic characteristic of English that serious poetry falls out in iambic pentameter while comic poetry sorts itself into tetrameter.  This is obviously a huge generalization; it would be interesting to compare with English poetry written by subcontinent Indians, whose spoken English is distinctively accented, or writers whose mother-tongue is one of the Chinese tonal dialects.

Bottom line:  I don't know, maybe "Don't fight the language in which you're writing?"  Or maybe use judo or aikido on it, directing its offensives in a direction of your choice with minimum force.

Quote:  Or maybe use judo or aikido on it, directing its offensives in a direction of your choice with minimum force.

Muay thai's the new thing lol

Actually, since English is a language in a constant state of flux, all perfect rhymes have definitely not been done to death -- and even if they had, varying the surrounding words and context in unexpected ways revitalises the rhymes themselves. As the Duke said, end rhyme seems to be unfairly vilified by contemporary poets but it's really just another tool in the box. It's not the tool that's faulty, it's the way people use it.

The original comment was about end stopped lines with perfect end rhymes, which have truly been flogged and made leather of.
Italian and Spanish have the benefit of conjugation, plus Italian is the most beautiful language there is, so any comparison will be unfair.
Capablanca said, early in the last century, that chess was dead and a larger board with new pieces would be required to carry on the game. Yet here we are still soldiering on with Magnus Carlsen.
So it is with rhymed verse generally,

True, chiming rhymes do clang against the refined ear -- like any tool, it can create something pretty ugly in the hands of someone who thinks they know what they're doing but is really only copying without truly understanding.

I think using end line rhyme requires great skill, if it is to work unobtrusively. When the flow, diction and word choices all work together, it can be sublime. But still, Lord preserve us from The Queen's English Society. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/a...ews.poetry

There's a word for those people. It's a rude word and you know I'd never say a rude word. But that's what they are.

for all i know spanish could just be gibberish without any rhymes. but english rhyming poetry [all kinds] when done well is a wonder to behold. as for perfect rhymes being flogged to death. never, the bad stuff yes, but there are to many words and to many nuances to make them floggable. forced rhymes are a killer but subtle clever rhymes? there is much beauty in all kinds of poetry even certain rhymed stuff.

(10-18-2016, 11:13 AM)billy Wrote:   english rhyming poetry [all kinds] when done well is a wonder to behold

That is, strangely, true. The more beautiful words in English are of Anglo Saxon origin - wood, stream, cloud, stone, bough. At the same time, it hath a number of Latin and Greek words in it. Therefore, despite not having the grammatical beautie of Italian or Spanish, as our courte ladies are wont to speak, it hath a vocabulary sweeter than any other language of foreign origin (fie on the foreigners). Being essentially an improvised language for most of its life, it hath a flexibility that maketh poetic conceit easie.

                                                                                                  ~ Shaksparre, the pomposs asse

In general I prefer off rhymes at the end of a line, but I am a big believer that form should follow function, so there is a time and place for everything. How anyone can argue that one language is better, more beautiful or whatever than another is a great example of simplistic thinking.

dale

The question of rhyme or no rhyme overlooks several things: most folk prefer rhyme but poetry teachers and critics eschew it like the plague and so poets, noting the proscription, shy away from it. The problem is reflected in the automotive world in which some are concerned only with how well a car handles and rides; others delve into its mechanicals. So, too, with food: most speak of having had a good meal, others critique meat, starch and vegetable separately. For poetry, isn't what counts is its overall effect, what one feels when reacting to a poem just read?  If there were a general poetry magazine displaying poetry's great variety, one could move happily from formal rhyme to something approaching doggerel and enjoy both.
Try the following after reading a "serious" poem:

In ragged jeans
the young think
what's in them
is what girls are after.
In elegant slacks
the old know
what's in them
just prompts
laughter.

(10-20-2016, 04:18 AM)zorcas Wrote:  The question of rhyme or no rhyme overlooks several things: most folk prefer rhyme but poetry teachers and critics eschew it like the plague and so poets, noting the proscription, shy away from it. The problem is reflected in the automotive world in which some are concerned only with how well a car handles and rides; others delve into its mechanicals. So, too, with food: most speak of having had a good meal, others critique meat, starch and vegetable separately. For poetry, isn't what counts is its overall effect, what one feels when reacting to a poem just read?  If there were a general poetry magazine displaying poetry's great variety, one could move happily from formal rhyme to something approaching doggerel and enjoy both.
Try the following after reading a "serious" poem:

In ragged jeans
the young think
what's in them
is what girls are after.
In elegant slacks
the old know
what's in them
just prompts
laughter.

I don't think poets shy away from rhyme. Because so much poetry has been written in rhyme over the years, and English has a relatively small stock of rhymes, it's not possible to write like Blake anymore without sounding cliched and predictable. Or Shelley, with his inordinate love for 'mountains / fountains'  which he did to death in Promoetheus Unbound and elsewhere. As with every other feat of human endeavour, the bar has been raised higher.
The trick is to employ rhyme in a way that the reader's eye is not drawn to the rhyme and therefore the cliche. Slant  rhymes, enjamment, and an irregular rhyming scheme all do that. That's in serious poetry. In humorous poetry, which is far easier to write, mutisyllabled rhymes can be used and end stopped lines are not a problem.

---

Lots of typos in the above

Rhyming is ok, but I think if you are writing about something serious rhyming doesn't work. If you're writing for some joyous occasion, rhyme away... But, if your writing about the death of an unborn fetus, rhyming will never work.

Abort


The doc got to work
and with a bit of a jerk,
pulled out parts of a fetus
that looked like uncle Cletus.


Maybe it does work?

Are we really doing this again?

Rhyme, don't rhyme. Serious, frivolous. Your labels are bullshit.

There is poetry done well, and poetry not done well. End of.

Just, when can you tell if they're serious...

I once had a honey who would bring me breakfast early every morning.
She was so much older, but lord knows I was so horny .
I came home one day, she said, "honey,wanna hear a funny story?"
She was married to an inmate who got out, and now he's looking for me.

When I turned 21, my friends and I took a trip to Vegas.
A honey came up to me saying, "sonny do you wanna make it?"
I took her by the hand,escorted to my room but she was only fakin'.
She tied me up, took my money, left me there stranded, and naked.

I was at a club when a honey came up and sat down at my table.
We hit it off quite nice,flirting, though I had a tendency to ramble.
She'd laugh and kiss me on the cheek, suggesting we blow out the candles.
Then it struck me in a horror, right before me! Her little adam's apple.

What is exactly was it to cause my confidence to shatter?
When Little Debbie saw me in the shower and broke out in laughter?
Everywhere I'd go, the girls went giggling after.
Apparently in high school, you can't say size doesn't matter.

I once had a honey who told me she would rather be a lesbian,
but even she was better than the drama queen, I'm sorry, 'thespian'.
Gothic-druggy, baptist-barbie,vegan-hippy, one-legged equestrian
With this sexual frustration I'll just give it up to some random pedestrian.

How many times have I tried to pick up chicks ?
How many times have I heard let's just be friends?
I don't mind waiting, in order to enjoy the experience,
but at the going rate, my fate seems friends with abstinence.

Crundle,

I'm having trouble finding words right now but... 

--Quix

(10-20-2016, 06:07 AM)Leanne Wrote:  Are we really doing this again?  

Rhyme, don't rhyme.  Serious, frivolous.  Your labels are bullshit.

There is poetry done well, and poetry not done well.  End of.

Well, yes and no. Enduring poetry must see the light of day beyond a poet's room, and that means publication. Poets sell their wares to editors, not
the public, and must cater to their concept of "done well". As one poetry-loving critic put it:

[There]  is the insularity of the poetry community. I don't mean any intentional gate-keeping (though it happens), but the natural self-perpetuating cycle of publication generated by a small range of tastes making all the decisions. A certain range of poetry is dominant and when people encounter poetry outside of school for the first time they're likely to encounter it within this range; if it connects with them, they get into poetry, start writing it, editing it, and publishing it, ensuring poetry from that certain range remains dominant; if it doesn't (and odds are it won't) they won't get into poetry and won't influence what poetry is published.
****

Thus my take:  many a poet faces the worst of times for brevity, social comment, levity--and if it rhymes.

P.S. why the sexist vulgarity of Bullshit when cows excrete the same stuff?                   

P.S. why the sexist vulgarity of Bullshit when cows excrete the same stuff?                   

[/quote]

Once again, you're wrong. 

Cows excrete cow shit.