When most of us think of poetry, we tend to think of rhyme. Or, to phrase it another way, when most of us hear rhyme, we automatically categorize that as poetic. It's like me and velvet or Kate Moss and Cocaine; where when you have one, you seem to naturally have the other.

As the senior poetry editor of Mused , I'll let you in on a little secret. 99% of the poems submitted that are rhymed are flat out rejected. In fact, if a poem is rhymed, it's going to have to pass a standard of criteria even higher than its non-rhymed cousin. As I've been rightly accused of being fairly harsh on rhyme, I intend to use this weeks column as both a justification of any seeming prejudice against it as well as offer a few reasons as to why the rejection rate on rhyming poetry is so high, and why you as a beginning poet should think twice before embarking down a rhyming road.

Master Meter First

I suppose one reason people tend to rhyme is for the same reason they use archaic words like 'thee' and 'thou': because it sounds poetic. We all well remember sitting through Poetry 101, perusing over the greats, studying Shakespearean sonnets and the like. However, if you browse through any current anthology of modern poetry, and by current I mean the last decade, you will rarely find examples of rhyme. What you will find is a lot of carefully metered poetry. Poetry which, when read aloud, sounds lovely and lyrical to the ear. The lack of said meter is the single biggest problem in the employment of poor rhyme. Yes, singularly. If you are to be a poet, you must master the differences between an anapest and trochee before you begin to even think about rhyming anything.

Or to paraphrase another brilliant poet on poor rhyme scheme, "The banality of badly rhymed English sticks out like a razor blade in Jello."

Nuff said.

Forced Rhyme is Not Your Friend. Not Now. Not Ever.

The fraternal twin of bad meter is forced rhyme, and the bane of all readers. Forced rhyme occurs when you set out to nicely rhyme something, let's say in an AB/AB end rhyme scheme, and in order to make your chosen word fit you find that you have to awkwardly restructure your sentence. Allow me to apologize in advance and ask you to hold my hand for what I'm about to torture you with as example:

You rhymed a poem
despite my need;
I wept and I wept
and my heart did bleed.

You can see where I felt it nice to choose the word bleed, but then got stuck and decided to rearrange the words so that I could use it, thus completing my perfect rhyme. However, you'll note that it renders the sentence itself as archaic and amateurish. Not something you want your reader to feel necessarily(unless, as in this example, it is on purpose).

And yes, thank you, I feel a little ill at having written it.

The things one does for art.

Rhyme is No longer a Standard in Modern Poetics

It's a fact - go to your library and browse through any current anthology of poetry and most of what you will find is metered free verse. Rhyme, while being a standard of poetry, is not used nearly as frequently as beginning poets seem to think. This isn't to say that there are not fine examples of it occuring, but to note that they are far more the exception rather than the rule, and that the standards of utilizing rhyme effectively in a poem force a higher level of quality simply because so much attention rests on the the rhyme itself.

So heed wisely, gentle reader, lest your poem come across as sounding like the latest Hallmark sentiment. And of course, if writing greeting cards rather than poetry is closer to your goal, then by all means ignore this advice and indulge away!


Further Helps and References

An excellent resource, not only for dealing with the tricky issues of meter and rhyme, but all aspects of honing and crafting your poetry to make it publishable can be found in Poet Laureate Ted Kooser's wonderful DIY guide, The Poetry Home Repair Manual.


Lisbeth Cheever-Gessaman