Why doesn't modern poetry rhyme anymore?

Question

Poetry used to rhyme. If it didn't rhyme it was called Prose.

they used to call it prose not poetry
if it didn't rhyme. If it doesn't rhyme what makes it different to
just a story?

Answer 1

You haven't checked into your history very much. Free Verse has been around a very long time. You have been listening to Formalist rhetoric. What you're saying is like writing haiku (non-formal and very old, btw) and focusing all your energy on counting syllables--you've missed the point of writing haiku then. Or like saying their is only one way to paint, and then pointing to the Thomas Kinkade on your wall. Open your mind, it won't hurt a bit!

Learn well.

Answer 2

To be perfectly honest, I can't tell the difference between free-verse poetry 'n prose. I don't get what 'prose' is, I mean really.

But anyways... 'Modern' poetry doesn't rhyme anymore, for a good reason. People have come to realize that poetry does not need to rhyme to be poetry. Sure, they still don't know what is poetry, what makes poetry, poetry. But at least a little girl can write a poem without rhymes 'n not be made fun of by her friends as much.

Plus, not everyone does free-verse. To this day, I still see people making rhymes in 2-3 different ways, still thinking that what's makes a poem... But if that's what makes a poem, then poetry is no more. Because now we have rap music, ya see.

I can actually get fairly impressed when I read a good free-verse poem. Because I don't see that very often. I mean, if you'd like some examples, I can give you links to questions right here on answers with terrible free-verse, brilliant, awful rhymes and great rhymes. Once you take a look at them you tell me, is it poetry because it has to rhyme...?

Answer 3

Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
A visitant that while it fans my cheek
Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings
From the green fields, and from yon azure sky.
Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come
To none more grateful than to me; escaped
From the vast city, where I long had pined
A discontented sojourner: now free,
Free as a bird to settle where I will.

From "The Prelude", by William Wordsworth. The first version is from 1850. Does it rhyme? No. But it is not prose either. It's poetry, as well as Paradise Lost, as somebody else pointed out.
This debate about rhyming and non rhyming poetry has been going on for ages amongst poets (in English at least). It has nothing to do with modern poetry. Maybe it is set forms that you prefer, and not necessarily rhyming poetry. But the poetry that is written nowadays corresponds to the period we live in. It does not mean that anybody can write poetry. I mean good poetry...

Answer 4

I learned a great deal about poetry. That was about 30 years ago. I was taught in school that there are so many different forms of poetry...one of the kinds of poetry I learned about might have very well been called prose...so it's not just modern day poetry. Many poems do rhyme nowadays...listen to a lot of songs, including rap music - much of it is rhyming lyrics. I even learned that you can do picture poems.

Answer 5

Let me start out by saying that non-rhyming poetry is not modern. William Shakespear used it waayyy back when. Trouble is , the stuff was just as bad then as it is now. Generally called free verse or blank verse, it is generally considered a very easy way to make a poem. Trouble is, many don't understand that it isn't so easy, and they just string words together on short choppy lines and with absolutely no punctuaion. For instance,

They will take something that looks like this and is one big runon sentence and chope it up they think this constitutes poetry unfortuneatly it does not it just constitutes a large bunch of words run together so in order to make sense of it they will put it in short choppy lines when they are finished they call it a poem it usually is nothing but a piece of bad grammer all chopped up so it looks something like this:
They will take
something that
looks
like this and
is one
big runon
sentence and chop
it up they
think this constitutes
poetry unfortuneatly it
does not it
just constitutes a
large bunch of words
run
together so in
order to make sense
of it they will put
it in short
choppy lines when
they are finished they
call it a poem it
usually is nothing
but a piece of
bad grammer all
chopped up so
it looks
something
like this

But not all do that and not all free verse is bad. There are some who have found the secret to writing free verse. It must have rhythm, that is what makes rhyming poetry attractive. Without rhythm, no form of poetry will read or sound well. If the poem has rhythm, the words will seem to flow off the paper in a smooth motion, regardless of line length or rhyme. So you can see that free, or blank verse, written properly, is neither easy, nor blank. Rhyming poetry must also have rhythm, which seems to be easier for some, and not achievable by others. That is what makes a great poet, it's the ability to write all forms of poetry well and know the difference between good and bad. Just because something comes from the heart, doesn't make it good poetry, might be a good story, or good essay, or a good sentiment, but without rhythm and flow it will not be a poem. That is why I am not a great poet. Although I can generally tell good from bad, I am not proficient enough to write good free verse except on rare occassions, and also I prefer rhyming poetry.

Answer 6

Writing evolves over time. Everything goes through cycles. Modern free verse is still distinctly poetry because as Dondi points out it has rhythm. Prose with line breaks has never been--will never be--poetry. People probably don't rhyme as much today because they think of it as archaic, or associate it with nursery rhymes. That said, I think when rhyming is done well it is almost invisible and pleasent to read. All poetry is difficult to write well. I like reading traditional forms and free verse--I also like writing them; I attempt both often (because it is fun to do). I don't think we should limit what we consider poetry just because it isn't our personal preference.

Answer 7

There are many, many things which go into poetry, rhyme is only one of them, and in itself does not make a piece a poem. You'd be hard put to find the rhyme in a Sestina, one of poetry's most complex forms built on six words used at the end of lines for 36 lines in a set pattern and then in three which compose an envoi at the end for 39 lines total, the form Dante used for the Divina Comedia. You'd look in vain for rhyme in poet laureate Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. You'd also look in vain for poetry in all the school boy rhymes that appear on this site.

[We're too used to reading poetry in translation, Latin and Greek poets DID use rhyme, these languages are far easier to rhyme in than English (I read the Classics in the original), Anglo-Saxon prosody depended on heavy alliteration, which is a form of rhyming (Hie dygel land warigeath, hleothu, wulf hleotho, frecne fen gelad ther frygen stream unter gnessa genippu flod unter folden).]

Answer 8

Call me old-fashioned, but when poetry doesn't rhyme, it hardly seems like poetry to me. I have been corrected on this, but it still seems to lack something of the beauty and feeling we get from rhymed poems. I pretty much always prefer rhymed poems to "free verse," and wonder if that will ever change.

Answer 9

I think originally "poetry" referred to a particular type of creative writing, which used rhyming and metre as a way of increasing the potency of its message. But later, many people focused on the form, ie rhyming and metrical scheme, and brought this in their idea of the "essence" of poetry, so they were a sine qua non for something to count as such.
I don't think it matters so much whether you call something "poetry" or "prose", except insofar as it relates to your criteria for judging it

Answer 10

While its true poetry does not have to rhyme. its not true to say all modern English poetry doesn't rhyme, it depend on the poet. Try reading Tony Harrison a great Yorkshire poet ( he can't help that we all have our cross to bear) most if not all of his poems rhyme, some critics say they rhyme too well and call them doggerel, but what do they know.

Answer 11

There are many classic poems that don't rhyme. And there are many types of modern poetry that rhyme.

In my experience, most spoken word poetry rhymes.