9-26-06

I'm taking a poetry workshop this semester. The following comment appeared on a classmate's critique of one of my recent poems:

"The rhyme/meter in your first poem was cute...but now it's a little annoying. No doubt I can appreciate the effort, but try to change up your style a bit."

I'm sure that when Chaucer, the Father of Modern English, the first great poet -- really, the first great writer of any kind -- who wrote in a language which we can recognize today as English, decided to write all of his poetry in rhyme, thousands upon thousands of lines of rhyming iambic couplets (or Rime Royale, which is even harder) -- he was doing it just to be "cute." That clearly was his motivation.

And when Shakespeare, one of the greatest dramatists of all time, decided to write over 150 sonnets in strict iambic pentameter rhyming quatrains, and also to compose the bulk of his legendary dramas in rhyming iambic pentameter, he was just trying to be "cute," too.

Apparently it's irrelevant that nearly all of the greatest poetry ever written, in any era, in any language, on any subject, rhymes.

Today, put rhyme into a poem and that's automatically strike one. In a workshop of thirteen people, I'm the only one who rhymes. And we never talk about the others' decision to write in free verse; no, there's nothing strange about that. But when my poems are critiqued, people don't just point out places where the rhyme is forced, the language is weak, the structure could be improved, etc; they also question whether it is wise of me to be rhyming at all. That's right: people seriously wonder why I am rhyming in a poem.

That's the attitude. I wish I were joking.

As far as poetic talent goes, I'm somewhere around the middle of the class. But just because some of my poems stink, doesn't mean that the rhyme is there because I'm trying to cover up the stench with cheap glitz. The rhyme is there because I'm trying to write poetry. We can debate whether a blue square on a green canvas is art, but a portrait of a woman is clearly art; similarly, we can debate whether free verse is poetry, but something that rhymes (and has meter to boot) is clearly poetry.

I love the workshop, I'm learning a lot, and I get to read a lot of terrific poetry. I'm just surprised, amused, and a little saddened that the presence of rhyme in a poem is now considered STRANGE, whereas a block of ungrammatical, underpunctuated prose chopped up into haphazard lines has somehow become the poetic ideal.