ARTICLE

On February 1, 2009 at 8:42 pm Mary Meriam wrote:
“Company is inherent in rhyming,

where one word keeps company

with another. And rhyme, like any

metaphor, is itself a threesome,

though not a crowd: tenor, vehicle,

and the union of the two that

constitutes the third thing,

metaphor.” Christopher Ricks,

Dylan’s Vision of Sin

On February 2, 2009 at 7:58 am J. Christopher Blanchard wrote:
"Rhyme annoys people, but only people who write poetry that doesn’t rhyme, and critics."

I have found this to be completly true. I love the fact that you had the courage to say it and that this magizine printed it. Thank you both.

On February 2, 2009 at 2:51 pm dylan wrote:
I think that 100 years from now, when L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets and Futurists and Beats and New York Schoolers are forgotten, poets like Cummings, Dickinson, Auden, Wilbur, Dylan Thomas, Theodore Roethke, and even Clement Clarke Moore will be remembered. (Schoolchildren of 2109 will know "A Visit from St Nicholas"!) Rhyme remembers itself. As does meter.

Ms Stallings reprehends unrhymed translations of rhymed poems, and I'm with her if she means the trite slop proposed by, say, Robert Bly as feasible "translations." (See especially Bly's rendering of Goethe's "Selige Sehnsucht.") But I think if one retains the meter, then dropping the rhyme is more excusable. (A sonnet can, I think, be translated into 14 lines of unrhymed pentameter, and still be pleasurable to the reader.)

On February 2, 2009 at 6:49 pm Jan Iwaszkiewicz wrote:
Amen!

On February 3, 2009 at 12:21 am Vivek Narayanan wrote:
Thanks-- this is about as fascinating, insightful and precise a manifesto as I've ever seen about rhyme.

On February 3, 2009 at 10:01 am Jim Finnegan wrote:
Is there an echo in here?

On February 4, 2009 at 9:48 am David LaRue Alexander wrote:
This article and it's comments are the most insightful that I've ever read in Poetry Magazine. Poetry is art expressed through language. Rhyme is a part of language. Why has it been relegated to the the status of the "red headed step child?" It would be akin to limiting the artist to only certain type of brush strokes. Poetry that creates visual imagery is great! However, so is poetry which utilizes rhyme and rythym.

As a poet I truly only know one way to state it:

When did the rhyme go? I don’t know!

I’m only aware that I miss it so!

When poems I read from olden times,

more often verse is filled with rhymes.

When poems I read that are today,

more often rhyme has gone away.

When I was young and not so smart,

was rhyme that tickled my small heart.

When older yet I had become,

both rhyme and rhythm taught me some.

When finally a man, all fully grown,

many books of poetry I did own.

When did it become so complicated,

on precisely just how the words are stated?

When I understand it, and I hope I do,

you’ll be the first that I am telling it too.

When I have to recollect being a child,

just to recall what first gave me that smile.

When I have to go back to my very first book,

just to remember the reason, I took a look.

Twas rhyme I discovered,

that got me hooked!

On February 4, 2009 at 10:05 pm levar burton wrote:
Way to rhyme "look" and "book" there reading rainbow.

On February 4, 2009 at 11:07 pm Janet Kenny wrote:
I pity people who don't love rhyme. They

are like people who don't love colours or

scents.

There is a recognised neurological

condition which causes people to be

unable to appreciate music. Nobody

considers that to be a fortunate or better

state of being.

Thank you A. E. Stallings for saying what

we all have known since childhood but

have not been permitted to say out loud.

On February 5, 2009 at 8:58 am CChilders wrote:
Bravura parody there, Mr. Alexander. When, oh when indeed, did it become so complicated. Score one for the other side.

On February 5, 2009 at 10:56 am GSHoughton wrote:
The poems'a tale -a story line- of varied proportion it's yours or it's mine we've chosen to reveal our id's little find all stodgy or smiley racy whiney or kind and if it comes with a rhyme that is fine and it's fun no one's making you read it yer not under a gun but if it's just like a letter you wrote to your sis and doesn't say where it's going or why the breeze is defiant at the lower end of the canyon where a temper swells

and whacks a turgid rasp of a possum tail across the cheek of a ten year old sailor from old cape cawd as the homeless in line at the mission have all shuffled inside to hear all the poems about sleeping in beds knowing...they're better off now than in a snow drift dead and they won't complain or cry or wail cuz they're hearin' poems that rhyme and not in jail and doin' hard time then pray for thesaurus dictionary pen inspiration or hope for tomorrow knowing today's the thing the only thing and faith and love and if they only had a computer they'd link up youtube or Hooters and be damn sure to write poems that rhyme and don't stink and not give a shit what other folks think

On February 5, 2009 at 2:58 pm aGill wrote:
The question of when rhyme became a cardinal sin has been gnawing at me for quite some time, and I'm relieved to hear so many voices crying in support of this poor, nearly lost soul. I do, however, think that it is a delicate art, gilding a poem with rhyme, and in the wrong hands it can be almost blasphemous. I suggest that those critics who so shun rhyme do so because of a rooted fear of it - a fear in many of us, that our skill is not the right skill, and it is simply better to avoid the trick altogether. Here's to those who do hear the music - especially those who can both hear and sing.

On February 6, 2009 at 12:46 am Matt wrote:
This reminds me of people who think

there's a "war on Christmas".

On February 7, 2009 at 1:30 am B. W. Benson wrote:
Read Plath.

On February 9, 2009 at 4:54 am Sean Smith wrote:
I own this book.

0877791856

Am I a sinner?

Also, when it comes to translating

"rhyming" poetry from one language to

another. You really have to dissect the

origin of the rhyme in that language.

Russian for example rhymed by "case."

I've used this with less than pure

intentions but it is a wonderful example.

In Russian to say, "I see a very pretty

girl." Which has zero rhyme in English

comes out phonetcially:

"Ya vee-zhoo un ohchin kraw-see-voo-

yoo day-voosh-coo."

Say it with the deeper part of your voice

and make direct eye contact. :) For

added effect keep the vowels sounds

long in the dashes.

Now if Chekov were a poet and I wanted

to translate a poem of his to keep my

job because I was lazy for a semester

and hadn't published anything yet and

someone wanted to harangue me for not

being able to rhyme the poem in English

we'd have words.

It is also to my understanding that Latin

and Italian have similar properties.

English does not have cases, which not

only frees us to rhyme with something

more than the sounds of the lexical

symbols using grammatical structure to

complete a sentence but also with

humor and wit and valor and spit. A

curse to sky and our fists held up high,

screaming manifest or die. Ya know.

On February 9, 2009 at 7:05 am George Szirtes wrote:
Nice and neat. With you of course. And I like rhymes hearing each other across a distance, so they do.

Personally, I also like rhyme as counterpoint to sentence.

Apropos your 'Rhyme is an irrational, sensual link between two words', which is lovely, rhyme (as I tell my students on accasion) is an accident waiting to happen. So let it happen.

On February 10, 2009 at 4:45 pm Murchadha wrote:
Contemplating his mortality,

Richard Rorty turned to poetry,

His pragmatism undefiled,

And somewhere Matthew Arnold smiled.

On February 11, 2009 at 3:01 pm Michael T. Young wrote:
The freedom to not-rhyme must include the freedom to rhyme. Then verse will be “free.”

To me, this first line is the core point. Really, by now, we should be beyond saying a poem has to rhyme or not rhyme, have meter or not have meter. Such sweeping judgments are evidence of a lazy or small mind.

On February 17, 2009 at 12:05 am Mary Meriam wrote:
From a critical essay on Max

Beerbohm by John Updike:

When all the minority reports are

in, the trend of our times is

overwhelmingly against formal

regularity of even the most

modest sort; in the “Cantos,”

Pound has passed beyond free

verse into a poetry totally

arrhythmic. Our mode is realism,

“realistic” is synonymous with

“prosaic,” and the prose writer’s

duty is to suppress not only

rhyme but any verbal accident

that would mar the textural

correspondence to the massive,

onflowing impersonality that has

supplanted the chiming heavens

of the saints. In this situation,

light verse, an isolated acolyte,

tends the thin flame of formal

magic and tempers the inhuman

darkness of reality with the

comedy of human artifice. Light

verse precisely lightens; it

lessens the gravity of its subject.

(3/7/64)

On February 22, 2009 at 11:06 pm Stephen Rodriguez wrote:
I'm glad this was published. I feel like it will help to open the doors that many poets have found so tightly closed for years.

It looks like rhyme will find its way back onto paper sometime in my lifetime, which is a big relief. I also feel like my generation has childrens poets like Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein to thank for an early introduction to rhyme and rhythm.

It's really a shame that it dwindled for so many years, but I can't blame anyone. Change is good, and the entire future of writing was changed by Modernism.

It's important to keep the blood circulating.

On February 23, 2009 at 2:50 pm Steve Kronen wrote:
Books on the sill: verse,

and prose, spines of silvers,

and golds - a thick one of oranges

placed where the door-hinges

swung too freely - when, one month

the wind, as they say, runneth

over - the leaves in that book ablur:

the very weathers of April.

On February 24, 2009 at 4:01 am Sean Smith wrote:
Yes. I understand too that non rhyme

can be illustrative, however the basis of

poetry as we know is something like

this.

Idea 1:

A group of children in grade school are

playing together in the playground.

There are no fences, only some

concrete with a few basketball goals.

There are two or three different jungle

gyms. The hated hand walk bars. These

things are all usual, however since the

children have no fence (form) they

cluster together in small groups, feeling

safe.

Across town another grade school has

similar children, but this playground is

surrounded by the fence. The children

will seek out each and every corner that

is laid around them, having no need to

fear the outside world thanks to the

protection of the fence.

Idea 2: Poetry as Music

As most of us agree, music has rhythm.

Music has bars. Music has notes. Notes

repeat. Thinking of poetry as the lexical

music of the word, we must take non

rhyming free verse and weigh it versus

full rhyming metered verse.

Full rhyming metered verse (say a

sonnet) allows the musician (poet) to tell

their story with a predictable boundary

guiding them through the song.

On the other hand, non rhyming, no

metered (free verse) is more like Tom

Waits halfway through his third cigarette

without a single word or note repeated.

Jazz = Free Verse

Pop Music = Rhyming Metered Verse

Each have their time and place, but one

trumping the other, I believe, will not

happen in the course of posey for many

lifetimes to come.

On February 25, 2009 at 9:04 pm Stephen Rodriguez wrote:
Sean Smith: I agree with some of what you said, but the last statement just left me in disbelief.

"Each have their time and place, but one

trumping the other, I believe, will not

happen in the course of posey for many

lifetimes to come. "

I'm pretty sure free verse has trumped rhyming metered verse for the past say 80 years.

On February 26, 2009 at 1:46 pm Gilberto Garza wrote:
Write what you are inspired to write. Be it rhymed or un-rhymed. Meter and scheme are not indicative of limitations on content, only challenges to create within set parameters. Free verse is not indicative of complete freedom, for you still must manage to convey your thoughts in a manner that can be understood. So, right is write. Let your muse guide you and contentment is yours for the critics to attempt to steal.

On March 4, 2009 at 6:33 pm Dan Breene wrote:
A.E. Stallings dwells on a rock off the coast of Greece combing her long blond hair in the sun and luring Carnival cruise ships to their doom. That's what I hear.

On April 7, 2009 at 9:04 am Jamie Quirk wrote:
Yes, *yes*. B. W. Benson, YES.

On June 1, 2009 at 2:51 pm Marta Finch wrote:
"Translators who translate poems that rhyme into poems that don’t rhyme solely because they claim keeping the rhyme is impossible without doing violence to the poem have done violence to the poem."

Dear A.E. Stallings,

No child sneaking downstairs on Christmas morning to find a bulging stocking on the mantle could feel as excited and happy as I did recently reading your words about translation and rhyme in the February issue of Poetry. Thank you. For the past three years I have been laboring over the French Renaissance poems of Pernette du Guillet---a contemporary of the better known Louise Labe---rendering them into English and following the same meter and rhyme scheme as the originals. (Translation and explication of these poems has been a long term project of French scholar Karen James at the U of Virginia. She and I are doing them together for U Toronto Press in what is to be the first publication of her complete poems into English.) And perhaps your other comments will help to free those wishing to write in form from the fear of continued ridicule from those who don't.
Marta Finch