Achebe's comment on Rhyme

[zorcas]

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.
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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?