I believe it was Eliot who said that the poets of the Victorian era tried to divorce sound from sentiment; in other words, they were writing poems that sounded very nice but didn't have any real meaning; words chosen only because they rhymed or fit on a certain meter. While I still see some of that today, I see a huge amount of the opposite; writing poems that have a great deal of meaning, but, quite frankly, just don't sound good. This is a trend both in amateur and proffesional poetry, I think. Eliminate unnecessary line breaks, and you might as well be writing an essay as a poem for much of the work you see on this site, and everywhere else, too.

Does it seem this way to anyone else, or is it just me? And does anyone else find it distasteful? I don't think that every line has to be specifically measured in a poem, and that every line has to rhyme with another, but totally ignoring rhyme and meter seems to be missing what makes poetry poetry.

Well, I'd have to say I disagree. At least, for the most part. It is true, at least in my opinion that a poem needs to 'sound' good, and still maintain some sort of meaning. I don't however think 'sounding good' means rhyme. Sure, meter has a lot to do with it. An individual line of a poem might sound better or worse depending on the syllable count of the next. I'd agree to that. 99% of the time I find poems that rhyme are trite. The rhymes are way too pushed, and I think it's more laughable than enjoyable. It can happen that I find a poem that rhymes and I enjoy it, very slight possiblility, but it can happen.

Around here I think the problem is more with content than meter. It's ridiculous how nearly every poem is about the same topic. To a point where it is sooooooo obvious that the majority of them must suck. Yesterday I did a quick little survey of the poetry forum here... Held my mouse (If you hold the pointer over the thread a box will appear with the contents of the first post)over the first 10 poetry threads, and what did I find? "I'm lonely, I hate life, nobody cares, make it go away." in EVERY thread. It was truly vomitlicious.

I agree that most rhyming sound ridiculous, but that's mainly because it's done ridiculously. Most people force themselves into either AABB or ABAB, rhyming every lime and abandoning meter and good English entirely to force the rhyme. I think most really good sounding poetry uses rhyme, though, if sparingly at the least. In conjunction with meter and non-horriblywarped-grammar, rhyme starts to sound a lot better.


And yeah, I noticed that every poem is about the same stuff, too.

I agree with you both.

I think poems must sound good but there are many ways and tastes to sound good. I mean, as a musician (or not) I can say that what one poem must respect is not to be a compendium of words like in prose when read, and not to be a rhyme after rhyme stupid kind of "old style" easy or pushed poems.

Just words flowing with their own beats, the beats you hear while writing,
the coming of your senses, telling you not to stop,
and the topic? you forgot...
but it's all of your will written.

(fuck! in my language i could explain it better, but that's obvious, forget it)

hi all!!!

I'm afraid I must disagree with both Fuckdoll and Dark Messiah. T.S. Eliots 'The Waste Land' and its associated works do not meet any immediately visible rhyme schemes. Yet they are widely regarded as some of the Best poetry of that era. I have noticed that a lot of the WW1/immediately after poets did not make any attempt to have rhyme of any kind, but rather focused on the meaning of the poetry itself. Of course this focusing on the meaning rather than the presentation has lead to some purely masturbatory crap (Pound's 'The Metro' anyone?), but it has lead to some works that are both intellectually dense and at the same time pleasing to read.

I think maybe you didn't actually read what I posted.

bump.

The Wasteland does use rhyme, albeit sparingly. Phlebas the Phoenician, for instance. It also has a sense of meter, which I directly tied into rhyme.