One of last year’s prompts for our monthly poem on 12 Poems in 12 months was for a poem that rhymed.
Judging by the comments that accompanied this prompt it seems a lot of poets found it more of a challenge than usual.
But when I was at school (back in the Dark Ages) all the poems we studied rhymed, and anything we produced was expected to rhyme.
And scan.
e e cummings was still considered a rebel back then. Apart from a passing mention, we weren’t expected to cope with such sophistication until we moved on to A-Level – or even University.
This was my submission for that month’s poetry challenge.
Tigger’s Other Song
With apologies to Disney.
(And commiserations to A A Milne.)
The wonderful thing about rhyme is That rhyme is a wonderful thing. Your words may not be poetic But rhyming can make it all swing. Though limping lines and tortured rhymes frustrate your questing mind. Yet all is forgiven, your muse will be shriven if you can make it rhyme. The wonderful thing about rhyme is it veils that you're not making sense – together with scansion and timing – excusing words like 'whisht' and 'whence'. Let bouncy, flouncy, pouncy rhythm, carry us along, Because the most wonderful thing about rhyme, is when verse becomes a song.
Writing Wrinkles, and Random Ramblings 
🙂 love it!
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Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading 🙂
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my pleasure!
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At school I was introduced to In Just by E E Cummings. Not a rhyme anywhere. Another favourite is For Whom the Bell Tolls by John Donne not introduced to me directly at school but indirectly by Hemmingway’s book with that title. John Donne was from the sixteenth and seventeenth century, so I would argue, poetry that doesn’t rhyme is not a new concept.
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You’re right, of course. It’s poetry that rhymes that has become unfashionable. I stick with my claim that ‘in our day’ e e was mentioned in schools more as an oddity than a poet to revere. (This depended on your teacher, of course. There was no National Curriculum back then.) But his oddity was due more to his lack of punctuation than lack of rhyme.
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And John Donne?
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Again, he was something of a rebel in his time, wasn’t he? Whereas today poetry isn’t expected to rhyme. I the writing magazines’ competitions and poetry web pages it is rhyme that is rare. In fact, I joined the “12 poems” website challenge to try and learn what blank verse requires to call it poetry and not prose (not having a poetic soul myself), but I’ve yet to dare to produce any , other than the haiku.
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I’ve recently discovered Billy Collins (again via emails from Writers Write which manages the “12 poems…” challenge).
Being something of a poetry philistine I hadn’t heard of him, but I was taken by quotes from him at https://www.writerswrite.co.za/literary-birthday-22-march-billy-collins/ .
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I definitely like poetry to rhyme; otherwise I have trouble calling it poetry…
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that’s my problem. I fear I don’t have a poetic soul. If I didn’t rhyme it I wouldn’t know if it could be called poetry or not. (Actually, to be on the safe side, I don’t call it poetry. I call my rhymes “verse”.)
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I would agree that I would be concerned about ever calling myself a poet, since they seem to have pretty high standards for the quality of what they write… 🙂
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Me too!
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I’m glad it isn’t just me 🙂 . Thanks for reading.
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My pleasure! Followed you 💕
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Snap – interesting blogs
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