Why Don't Poems Rhyme Anymore?

The Queen's English Society may sound like the name of a Monty Python sketch, but I assure you it's very real. The group aims to protect "the beauty and precision of the English Language," and it's currently up in arms about supposed poems that--egad!--have no rhyme or meter.

The President of the QES, a man named Michael George Gibson (it may be a QES requirement to use three names), recently told the British newspaper The Guardian, "For centuries word-things, called poems, have been made according to primary and defining craft principles of, first, measure, and second, alliteration and rhyme. Word-things not made according to those principles are not poems."

I'm sorry...word-things?

Anyway, the QES isn't alone. Here in America, a movement called New Formalism has been pushing for a return to formal verse for decades. The poet and critic Dana Gioia in his "Notes on New Formalism" ticked off what he perceived to be the problems with contemporary free verse poetry:

The debasement of poetic language; the prolixity of the lyric; the bankruptcy of the confessional mode; the inability to establish a meaningful aesthetic for new poetic narrative and the denial of a musical texture in the contemporary poem. The revival of traditional forms will be seen then as only one response to this troubling situation.

I can hear the QES members tapping their canes in agreement.

Formalists have been tapping their canes for about a century now. Literary history records a sprinkling of early free verse poets like Walt Whitman and Christoper Smart, but the movement began in earnest in the early 1900s. Ezra Pound, who many consider to be the movement's figurehead, was a devoted student of poetry's traditions and a strong believer in the power of form, but he found the strict adherence to rhyme and meter limiting and artificial. He wrote many formal poems himself and thought poets should study the art's traditions before moving beyond them. He also felt they shouldn't move too far, writing "poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from the music."

Nonetheless, the free verse movement was something of a jailbreak. Freed from formal constraints, poets quickly pushed the limits of what could be called poetry. Here's a Gertrude Stein poem that could only be called Roast Potatoes:

Roast Potatoes

Roast potatoes for.

No, that's not an excerpt. Stein means to focus your attention on the transformation of the word "roast" into a verb.

Most contemporary poets take a mixed stance on free verse versus formalism. There's a general feeling that metrical, rhyming verse strikes the ear little too harshly these days, but poets haven't abandoned form altogether. Poets make use of subtler techniques like internal rhyme (rhyming within, rather than at the end, of lines) and slant rhymes (words that almost rhyme like "black" and "bleak"). Most poets still write with a music, but it's far more varied (and usually more subtle) than music typical of traditional verse.

I think most poets would also agree that you don't have to use rhyme and meter to write a great poem. Take the well-known word-thing This Is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams.

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

If that doesn't protect "the beauty and precision of the English Language," I don't know what does.

Still find yourself a fierce proponent of poetic purity? You're welcome to join the QES at the New Cavendish Club in London every other Thursday. And who doesn't enjoy a brisk debate about grammatical standards! Trust me, one might ensue. The QES's wikipedia entry--and I guarantee you they are all over their wikipedia entry--states "a commitment to standards should not preclude the possibility of grammatical change; nor does it mean, however, that change should be mindlessly celebrated for its own sake."

Mindless celebrating! Dare they forget how they got booted from Old Cavendish!

Comments

[FZliveson]

Non rhyming "poems" are the logical extension of the dumbing down of our society.
Feel-good shortcuts, look-good stunts and improvisation without foundation have given us a panoply of hollow pop-art. Discipline, vocabulary and the art of utilizing our language to its best advantage are out the window.
Free verse is to Poetry as Tee-ball is to Baseball..­.gratifyin­g, no doubt, but hardly satisfying.
There is a ton of widom and love and heart in free verse...bu­t it ain't poetry

[Ani]

Dumming down? I respectfully differ. There are poets who spend an entire lifetime in pursuit of creating a perfect haiku. Ask those poets if the result of their work is either dumb, or a feel-good shortcut. Would you dismiss the free verse of Shakespeare or Milton as hollow pop-art? Read the poignant work of the father of American poetry, Walt Whitman. Try on ee cumings, Billy Collins, Jorie Graham, or Maya Anjelou, to name only a few. I'd hardly say any of those masterful poets would be considered either dumb or simply performing "look-good stunts" in their stunning poetry.

If I may, I'd like to suggest you read Mary Kinzie's "A Poet's Guide to Poetry" before you dismiss all poetry that doesn't contain rhyming elements. Free verse takes more care and thought that you might have previously considered.

I certainly respect your viewpoint regarding rhymes, however, please open yourself to other thoughts and disciplines within the broad genre of poetry. You may find yourself pleasantly surprised!

[FZliveson]

Mea culpa...I was too specific about rhyme. I agree...ha­iku is a highly disciplined form of poetry. So you are correct in that regard. A rythmic structure, whether it be in rhyme, cadence, number of syllables or what have you....tho­se all rip the garters off any free-range grazing for attention vocabularist, seeking to be called a poet. It's subjective, no doubt.

[Jude2004]

I don't bother reading blogs from people who don't capitalize letters, but I love e.e.cummin­gs. Do these people read contemporary poetry at all? How could the constraints of rhyme improve Billy Collins poem "Introduction to Poetry" http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/001.html

I think of how few poems I love would fit their constraints. They just don't get it.

[Gracehoper]

Yeah that Ezra Pound, he sho was a dummy.

[nypoet22]

i know you stated this already, but i want to clarify gioia's point. it was not that a new formalism was good or even possible, merely that people advocating it were responding to a real loss. artistic communities of all sorts have diverged so far from their historical roots that their work has become inaccessible to outsiders. a different response to the same conflict has been the development of performance and "slam" poetry, which (though it would never be confused with formalism) has returned a focus on music and rhythm into the post-modern poetry world.

Solving Freud's Conflict (senryu)

Later or sooner,

spring bed, flower bed, we will

all sleep together.

[LeeScho]

I beiieve that most organizations, societies, clubs, etc. are formed to protect, unwittingly, a limitation of some established norm to which they adhere for reasons of chauvinism, social stanidng or economic viability.

Stick with formalism only and virtually all of the best poems of African-American poets would be eliminated as poetry. Meter and measure are rhythm, and those vary by culture. The goal is to appreciate them all. There is a rhythmical difference in languages Slavic, Romanitc, Gaelic, Africanic, Asian, etc. Holding them all to one standard of form and expression is not only anti-art, it is xenophobic.

[OtayPanky]

ARS POETICA

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown -

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind -

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

A poem should be equal to:
Not true

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea -

A poem should not mean
But be

-- Archibald MacLeish

[edwardcurtis]

I find it interesting to see the forces of literary conservatism at work here. In the end, it's the writers who truly get to define poetry. Literature­-with-a-ca­pital-L as promoted by groups such as the QES tends to be relegated to the academic world, which doesn't always reflect what's really happening on the street.

[Shozen]

It was the Academic world that gave me C's and D's for poems with rhyme and meter and A's and B's for poems written in "Free Verse."

Rap, with rhyme and meter from the street sells but books in Free Verse languish for years on the shelf.

Write what you feel and don't give a damn about what others think.

[Blutus]

Because it is easier to listen than to read......­.....

[gurukalehuru]

A poem can express a thought
or perhaps it can tell a story
Some poems rhyme and some do not
It's just two different categories

[ars]

word art
perhaps just rethink categories
or perhaps cultural designations
like a great painter or musician the professional poet must be credentialed

the common person poetry has much merit too
poetry is like breathing
air is still free
let freedom be