Why I Like Poems That Rhyme
Mar. 20th, 2011 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
laleiaMy attitude towards poetry is much the same as my attitude towards art, music, and Shakespeare. That is to say, I appreciate that it/they should be appreciated, but I don't quite appreciate it myself as much as I ought.
(Yes, this does mean that I generally don't listen to music, and so very rarely have actual opinions about music; yes, I understand this makes me bizarre, so I am working on developing stock answers/lies to questions about what genre of music I like or what singers I like, so that I can pretend to be normal with minimal fuss.)
Anyway, my point is that I generally don't seek out poetry, and it rarely speaks to me the way it does to most people. I also have a vague idea that poetry should rhyme. I understand that poetry doesn't often rhyme anymore, but I have always felt that it should.
Now for a while, I thought this was because I felt that if you put the effort into your poem so that it rhymes, so that it fits certain structures, that's the only way I know you actually tried, and you didn't just throw words together that ended up sounding nice completely by accident. This is a weak argument, though, and doesn't really sum up how I feel, so then I assumed that rhyming was just something I Liked.
I think, however, that the reason I prefer poetry that rhymes is because of this:
Poetry is really meant more to be spoken than to be read. (Or, I suppose, sung, depending on what era you're talking about.) I think the reason I prefer poetry that rhymes that is when there is rhyming and a rhyming structure, it becomes more apparent what rhythm you should use when reading the poem. When the author rhymes, you also get a sense of where the author suggests you should pause, where you should stress, where you should breathe.
A lot of modern poetry, however, especially the kind that doesn't rhyme and contains unexpected line breaks, lack these cues. My mental reading of the poem then quite often becomes a jumble of words and I don't find it as satisfying.
(Yes, this does mean that I generally don't listen to music, and so very rarely have actual opinions about music; yes, I understand this makes me bizarre, so I am working on developing stock answers/lies to questions about what genre of music I like or what singers I like, so that I can pretend to be normal with minimal fuss.)
Anyway, my point is that I generally don't seek out poetry, and it rarely speaks to me the way it does to most people. I also have a vague idea that poetry should rhyme. I understand that poetry doesn't often rhyme anymore, but I have always felt that it should.
Now for a while, I thought this was because I felt that if you put the effort into your poem so that it rhymes, so that it fits certain structures, that's the only way I know you actually tried, and you didn't just throw words together that ended up sounding nice completely by accident. This is a weak argument, though, and doesn't really sum up how I feel, so then I assumed that rhyming was just something I Liked.
I think, however, that the reason I prefer poetry that rhymes is because of this:
Poetry is really meant more to be spoken than to be read. (Or, I suppose, sung, depending on what era you're talking about.) I think the reason I prefer poetry that rhymes that is when there is rhyming and a rhyming structure, it becomes more apparent what rhythm you should use when reading the poem. When the author rhymes, you also get a sense of where the author suggests you should pause, where you should stress, where you should breathe.
A lot of modern poetry, however, especially the kind that doesn't rhyme and contains unexpected line breaks, lack these cues. My mental reading of the poem then quite often becomes a jumble of words and I don't find it as satisfying.
