Rhyming Vs Unrhyming

[Lady Penguin]

When I write poems, sometimes people tell me i should hold off the rhyming because it sounds forced, this kind of makes me wonder sometimes because I dont really try to rhyme it, it just kind of flows and rhymes by itself. I perfectly accept when people tell me this but i never seem to like unrhyming poetry as much, I dont know why...

Anyone else's opinion?

[Sharon]

...an interesting topic. I used to wonder the same thing and the advice I received was... that it's ok to rhyme but try to do so in a way that hasn't quite been said before.

[Laura]

Not to be rude, but I highly doubt you don't try to rhyme judging solely on the poems you've posted here. They are clearly forced rhymes. I tend to like slant rhyme but I love free verse. If you are good at rhyming, which I find many younger people aren't (sorry, it takes experience), then by all means do. It really depends what your style is. Of course, not everyone is going to like your poetry anyway.

It's your writing, therefore, it is your decision to rhyme or not. However, stay away from predictable rhymes (above and love are just annoying, true and you is bland, etc). This is why I like slant/off rhyme ... you can smudge the words to make them rhyme. It's all in the delivery.

[Sharon]

excellent points Laura - well said!

yeah people should avoid over using the word love especially if your aim is to make that line rhyme with another. there's only so much that can rhyme with love - of, above, dove... glove, shove, um... well, you know.

...some famous writers that rhyme and make it "work" because they've got experience:

Invictus by William Ernest Henley <--- one of my favorite poems of all time.

Emily Dickinson

William Blake

[sweetladyrach]

^^^

and Edgar Allan Poe

[Absinthe]

I agree with Laura on the attempting to rhyme thing. I find, that poetry tends to mean more, have a lot more emotion to it, if it doesn't hold a strict structure or rhyme. Even Emily Dickinson wrote outside the lines. While she may have rhymed, she did it in a style unique to her, with line breaks and other punctuation and wording to really give it the flair she is famous for.

Rhyming poetry is hard and a lot of times the attempt doesn't come out quite right. Like Laura said, rhyming tends to be more popular among younger poets. I used to rhyme nearly all my poems before I became more comfortable with thinking a bit outside the box.

[thecrazybeautiful]

I usually try to shy away from rhyming also. And I hate it when I write something that rhymes all the way through, because I rhyme horribly. The only time I do ok is when I don't realize that I'm rhyming.

And I like it a lot more when I read things from others that don't rhyme, or that have a random rhyming part in them. It just seems to be more enjoyable to read... And with free verse it's a little easier to have a flow in the poem, and that probably sounds incredibly dumb. It's all in the syllables though. When I rhyme I'm always worried about the syllables cause it sounds really awkward if the lines rhyme but aren't parallel to each other. But when it doesn't rhyme, it reads a lot better for some reason...

Yeah.

[Cullen]

In my personal experience i find that the rhymes come to me in my head but by the time i write down what im thinking ive forgotten what the rhyme was and thus try to force a different one, like my most recent poem Garbage bag poncho, had that whole thing in rhyming couplets while i was making it but because i was at work and had nowhere to write it down i was forced to try to remember it all this time i didnt try to force the rhymes out but you can clearly see that it was there in the final part between "door" and "sales floor"

[Chrono]

The way I see it, rhymes are some of the best means of adding a good flow to a poem if used correctly, but by no regards are they the only means or always the best choice for a poem. I don't think rhymes should be forced into a poem because they often lose their mellifluous nature if that is the case. My advice is, if you choose to make a poem with rhymes, take a fair amount of time deciding on the best possible diction for those rhymes so they can describe what you wish them to describe, rhyme fluently, and not be out of place within the poem.

[The Brutal Immortal]

i agree... when i write i prefer free verse, and sometimes, if i have to make it rhyme, i write about 3 or 4 lines ahead so it doesnt seem forced... i learned how to get the meter just right so a poem flows just right... i think free verse is actually harder to write because of you dont have the rhyme to make it flow, but instead you have to rely on the meter to get it right

[jasony]

They both seem good to me and also some mix of the two. Anyway, good rhyming is quite impressive as you might note from listening to rap. Anyway, though, obviously, many good lyrics and poems are not rhymed or not rhymed totally.

Anyway, it would be cool to experiment with this stuff - as with song lyrics - as I'd like to write songs.