to rhyme ... or not to rhyme

Hi Mississippi, So I didn't miss anything, either. You could still send me a card, if you want!! A clean one please, 'cos you are one naughty man! AJ :>)

Hi guys, It's me again!! I only have three poems on ABC tales each with only a few lines in rhyme. That makes me the proverbial birthday card writer etc. I wish a had a few of their pennies, don't you?? auntie jackie :>) PS I must confess that the poems did and still do mirror my love and thoughts for whom they were written.

Hey fey, it's quite ironic that you think I may be suffering from a terminal bout of gentlemanly behaviour because the lady that has just told me to get lost said I wasn't a gentleman. Actually I didn't think she really understood what made a gentlman, but perhaps I was biased! If you would prefer me to revert to type I'd be happy to oblige but I've been scolde by Antoinette for being childish and I'm getting a complex about it. Jackie sweetheart, how do you send a card on this site? While I'm waiting for some advice in this area I'll just tell you a favourite joke. On second thoughts it is a bit risque and I'm in enough trouble already so I'd better not!

a gentleman, as I understand it, is a man who is kind. and it is not kind to keep people in suspense when you have got them all worked up by saying you're about to tell a joke and then not

I must say jackie, you do seem to come in for more than your fair of derision, be intended or indirect. I can't help thinking that maybe I might become the next target when you no longer provide value for money!

OK, specially for fey! What did the prostitute say to the dwarf? Answers on a 'post' card please! (Please don't give me any abuse, it's only a joke!)

Well - I think that poetry that rhymes for the sake of rhyming is ridiculous - where words are bent to fit the sentence, but poetry without rhyme lacks spirit and flow when read aloud. Poetry doesn't have to have rigid form, in fact very few poems written in such a style work well, but rhyme, when used properly, adds to the rhythm and pace of the piece. Whether it rhymes or no, poetry should have rhythm and sound rounded, in my opinion... Jx

Hi Mississippi, I like your name it's so easy to spell. Reminds me of my schooldays. Oh so far away! Anyway, if I put myself in the frame so to speak I must expect the flack. Never mind, I think that every contributor to this forum has probably gaiged that already. I personally prefer rhyme, but then who am I to argue with my own home poet, (I,m Scottish) Rabbie Burns. Or indeed Wordsworth etc. But the world is a big place and there is always room for diversions. As for you being the next target, nah, your a bloke, and blokes just haven't got the same vitriolic responses as we women. Is that a bad thing?

Wordsworth uses rhyme. Jx

Mississippi that fell short of my expectations

Hi J, I know, that's what I meant. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough. Anyway, you know what I mean. AJ (as I now seem to called) :>)

I like poetry that uses rhyme for effect - ie, deliberately tenuous for humour (see my post on favourite song lyrics for examples) Rhyme can make things scan easier but some of my favourite poems don't rhyme. It depends on how well the poet uses it. Where does rhyming poetry stop and doggerel start though (and what's the definition of doggerel - I'm pretty sure I've written my fair share of it but can't think of how I'd define it)

Nice try but not the answer I'm looking for!

Bloke! AJ Bloke!! I'll have you know that I am in fact a MAN, maybe of uncertain origin, but a man nevertheless. And Emily dearest, it should be obvious that rhyming rhymes stop at the end and doggerel is a resort on the Costa del Sol!

fancy a low job?

Mississippi That was meant to describe the joke

I thought that might be what you meant fey, but I couldn't resist the alternative! After I posted the joke I just knew someone would suggest that it wasn't appropriate, probably on the grounds that it is toilet humour. One of the things I have never understood is how some people think a slightly coarse joke is very working class but think it's highly artistic to indulge in much worse in the name of literature e.g. D.H.Lawrence, and come to think of it some of the crude trash I've read here! That wasn't a reference to your answer Richard, which I find quite amusing but still not the answer I'm looking for!

eh?

richard ... i think he meant robert ... yours with aristocratic coarseness ivy

Sorry richard, of course Ivy's right! My dickleckseher is getting worse!

Mississ... Could the answer your looking for be 'Hope your'e not thinking of short changing me.' ?

Hi Muzzy, It's me again AJ. Come on now, why have I had a burfday and I don't know why. Are you the disappearing writer person, from Skeggy?? AJ :>)

Sorry Max, I don't think anyone's going to get it which surprises me because I've been telling it for twenty years now. Either no else likes to be a bit risque or it's crap anyway! Thw answerI was looking for is 'keep your nose out of my business!'

Hi Mississippi, I knew the answer, toooooooooo much of a lady to respond though!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now am I telling porkies, or am I a lady???????? Mmmmmmm answers on the proverbial POSTcard. PS If you are all getting the bags out again (sleeping that is) and the jaffa cakes etc, I would like a glass of red wine and a few ciggies, (why should you lot have all the comforts). AJ :>)

Not conviced Jackie really knew the answer but I can confirm she is a lady! But I didn't know she was a fag puffing wino! Still, I know she has other priceless qualities and I can tell she doesn't go to Skeggy for her holidays!

i have been thinking a lot about the question i posed on this thread ... and enjoying the responses ... your point fey about photography is an interesting one i think ... i am thinking now of the "reason" for poetry and if it was used as a method of relating story and history (in a time when things were not written down) and was passed mouth to mouth then devices such as metre and rhyme were aids to memory ... thus the need for these devices is no longer there ... poetry in the same way as painting has changed from a method of "recording" and handing on information ... to something else ... which leads me to another question ... in the absence of this "need" ... what is the POINT of poetry ... *lights blue touch paper and retires*

you can't record feelings in a photograph, which is also why painting has survived i would reckon. also, if there were no poetry, prose or painting, what would the top 1.8% speak about at dinner parties?

you can't record feelings in a photograph??? ... and the top 1.8% would have to talk about shagging ... like the rest of us ...

what is this shagging you speak of? was perhaps too hasty in saying you can't record feelings with a photograph, you can imbue one with feelings, much like a poem, but poetry tends to have the emotion *as well as* the subtext packaged within it.

Keep on digging weird fruit, I'll rent you my ladder!

hmmmm oranj .....

Is rhyme pointless without rhythm? Sound can create emotion. Colour can too. If you mix colour up too much it goes one colour -dirt. In writing you've got words, not paint, and if you mix them up too much for it to make sense it is just a one note sound, boring as a drill. Unlike a picture which can hit you and then you resonate even if you close your eyes, writing must have the time it takes to read it, as music to hear. A picture is held in the physical edges of itself. Time is writing's space. Poetry is diffferent from prose because it can create time between words. Lines of nothing. Half lines. Space. Maybe poetry is about experimenting with time? I've fallen off your ladder, Mississippi

Actually, that's what drama does. sorry

I think Ive heard enough of this bollocks, give my bloody ladder back and try to remember who you are you stupid twat!

mississippi ...that is ENOUGH!

Um...Er... Sorry everybody, I don't know what could have possibly come over me.

Mississippi you're right. Thank God I took the day off yesterday or I'd have got the sack for sure. Can one get high on Eucalyptus ?

(I'll try to keep this simply and mostly unpretentious [mainly to avoid confusing myself]). Rhyme, on the whole, is nice; like chocolate. "Yum". But too much of it, forced down your mouth at the wrong times of the day, spoils your appetite and drowns the taste of anything else. "Blaarrghh, I feel ill Mummy". So the moral is... have a nice balanced diet. (Euuggh how boring. Bet no-one told Dylan Thomas [he of the pounds of licorice each bath time] about this).

Sorry Taj, I think you failed!

It seems to me that some people on this thread have failed to grasp one simple point: poetry doesn't have to be serious. It can be amusing too. Like any art form, the poem has the ability to reach out to every type of emotion going - including humour - and to dismiss rhyming simply because it "doesn't create a poem of depth" is pure snobbery. Not every poem has to have a 'message', and not every poem has to attempt to stir your very soul. Sometimes it's just nice to pick up a book and be cheered up by what you find inside -and rhyme can do that very quickly and simply. For example the works of Spike Milligan may not make me contemplate the reason for my existence, but if I'm feeling a bit down then I'd still rather read his work than someone like Tennyson's (not to knock Tennyson of course!) I know I'm rambling a bit but my point is that there is a tendency to take poetry too seriously, and to dismiss as invalid any work - ie rhyme - that doesn't rise to the reviewers' pretensions. Rhyme is just as valid as non-rhyme, it just has a different purpose. I myself write in pretty formulaic - though not very good - rhyme and although I dont posess the 'skills to pay the bills' as oranj puts it, I still feel that my verses are just as valid as the non rhyming works of any other author. Sorry to drone on a bit, but this is a subject I feel quite strongly about! Btw a condensed (slightly!) version of my argument can be found in my poem "Rhyme damn you!" elsewhere on the site :) A shameless plug I know, but I couldn't help it :)!

good point primate ... pam ayres would not be such a goddess if she did not rhyme ... and i absolutely agree with you about spike milligan ...

AAAAAhh you do mean that...you gotta point I have no skills give me some pills AAh what the heck get them down my neck And when i'm done I will sit on my thumb but I only took 2 and I started to feel better which milk-man is my Dad I don't know Son there a lot of blokes at that dairy.

a poem has; 1. rhyme 2. rhythm 3. cadence one of those three, please. oranj

uuummm you have lost me now

basically, i mean the skills to pay the bills oranj

Pam Ayres a goddess! Really! And what might be nature of her godlikeness may I ask? Could it possibly be that aggravating silly voice? No I think you may be going over the top here just a tad Ivy, I think she might be popular on the basis that she's quite funny and probably sleeps with the producer!

At college we were always being told that figurative painting died out because of photography - there was no point struggling to achieve something a machine could do in a second, so everyone began trying to depict things a camera couldn't. Maybe rhyming has gone out of literary fashion because of the easy availability of recorded music and pop/rock lyrics? Blake wrote his poems with the strong rhythm and simple rhymes of street ballads so ordinary people who wouldn't go for posh stuff with latin references would like them. Maybe poets today write without steady rhyme and rhythm to distance themselves from pop music/advertising jingles/birthday cards? Being able to write with rhyme and rhythm is a skill, like drawing. A stronger impact can come from a rough Van Gogh sketch than a meticulous but 'wooden' drawing (Durer say) But an Ingres or Michelangelo drawing has skill and impact. I wonder if people who prefer figurative art are those who admire traditional forms of poetry. The miniscule knowledge I've of pre medieval poetry is that it had lots of complicated rules for rhyming internally : I'm sure some book said its forms echoed the decorative art from that time. Maybe our liking for free, unrhyming verse is to do with mechanisation - how the dead beat of machinery is inescapable in modern life and something flowing unpredictably, lawlessly, is what's needed. Art used to be there to provide order in the wilderness, now the wilderness exists simply to advertise the off road qualities of the latest fourwheel drive maybe art's there to provide freedom? (don't bother looking at my stuff to see if I can. I can't) Ok Mississipi. Tuck into pretension time

Beautifully put, Fey. In some poems I can see people straining for a rhyme so hard that it makes the whole poem constipated.

I can tell this is going to be a polarising topic! Are you sure you want to stir up this particular hornets nest Ivory? It's sure to stimulate a bit of frantic reading though as everyone starts checking the poetry of the participants before getting on their particular soap box. I'm very tempted to take the bait, but for a change I think I'll sit back for a bit before I stick my oar in, I'm sure there won't be any shortage of volunteers!

awww mississippi .... i was relying on you!