Questions I couldn't find ansers to

I was really excited to find this forum here. I'm not in any way suggesting that I'm good at poetry, but I do write for my wife. In any case, I did a search on the word copyright and couldn't find a thread about it ... so I was wondering if folks have had issues with their ideas being "borrowed".

I have one other "burning" question ..... I find that a lot of "poetry" today does not have to rhyme. I'm an older guy and this has never made sense to me. If there is a thread that talks about this, I'll be happy to read the arguments. But, I just don't understand how we got from rhyming poetry to non-rhyming poetry.

I'd love to have a discussion with anyone about this stuff. Thanks.

~ Cam

CamronsInsider said:

I was really excited to find this forum here. I'm not in any way suggesting that I'm good at poetry, but I do write for my wife. In any case, I did a search on the word copyright and couldn't find a thread about it ... so I was wondering if folks have had issues with their ideas being "borrowed".

I have one other "burning" question ..... I find that a lot of "poetry" today does not have to rhyme. I'm an older guy and this has never made sense to me. If there is a thread that talks about this, I'll be happy to read the arguments. But, I just don't understand how we got from rhyming poetry to non-rhyming poetry.

I'd love to have a discussion with anyone about this stuff. Thanks.

~ Cam

Click to expand...

If by "borrowed" you mean plagiarism, my advice would be, don't even think about it. All work belongs to the writer, and copyright means it's theirs. I won't get into another endless debate about how enforceable copyright is (not very, unless the writer is rich), but it's the ethics of not using another writer's content that matters.

If by "borrowing" you mean themes and ideas, that's different. An idea can't be copyrighted, a particular expression of it (ie: someone's poem) can.

Free-form verse has been around for a very long time, non-rhyming poetry just as long. It's just a different poetic form, is all.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_verse

Hello and welcome, I for my sins am one of the Moderators here
I don't think you'll find anyone here that condones plagiarism, I for one know mine has been stolen. Years back someone even sent me an email containing one of my poems and when I complained was asked what I was complaining about at least it was being read!!
Non-rhyming poetry is one of the many forms as shown in this thread The Thread of Forms and then there's been several Challenges plus Teach ins by myself shown here Here there be challenges
When I first came here I was rhyming everything too, and like you couldn't see the reason for non rhyming poetry, but I was taught by the best and urged to at least try non rhyming! I still write rhyming stuff at the drop of a hat and still have a great love for it!
I hope we'll soon see some of yours and that you'll accept critique and also learn that it isn't criticism but help to hone your art.
We still have Challenges and I hope to see you there, we don't bite
I'll probably move this whole thread over to the Poetry Feedback & Discussion section of the forum, where it will get a better airing.

CamronsInsider said:

I have one other "burning" question ..... I find that a lot of "poetry" today does not have to rhyme. I'm an older guy and this has never made sense to me. If there is a thread that talks about this, I'll be happy to read the arguments. But, I just don't understand how we got from rhyming poetry to non-rhyming poetry.

Click to expand...

If anything, it's the other way around. For much of history, non-rhyming poetry was the norm. Greek and Roman poetry rarely used rhyme, ditto early English poetry like "Beowulf". At some point around the Middle Ages, rhyme became popular in English, possibly inspired by Arabic poetry. But non-rhyming verse has always been around in English poetry.

For example, Byron usually wrote in rhyme, but he also wrote non-rhyming poetry like Darkness (1816). Yeats' The Second Coming was written in 1919, and Cummings' Buffalo Bill's in 1920. You may be an older guy, but I refuse to believe you're older than those poems

Darkness is one of my favourite poems, definitely my favourite Byron poem.

whilst it doesn't have end-rhymes, there are sound-links throughout that, like a melody weaves through a song's tune and notes harmonise for cohesion, sounds do exactly the same thing in this poem.

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

look at all the d's, the E-sounds in that first line alone. in the second line there's a whole bunch of T's, S's, and the R sound in 'stars' goes on to link with the same in 'darkling' and even in 'pathless' (as spoken with the english accent it was written in)... there's a sort of slide along the scale between 'path' and 'earth' with the 'th's, 'space' and 'Rayless' are full of hard 'A's and soft S's, and then in the last line 'Swung' links with 'sun' & 'blind' which goes on to connect with all the hard I's in L's 1 & 2 & 4 ('icy'), and the 'n's in the last line harmonise with those dotted throughout the lines.

it's cohesive and complete and not an end-rhyme in sight, yet feels almost rhyming as one reads it.

Has anyone considered that all poetry rhymes if we just pretend it does? Maybe we could redefine "rhyming" to include things that definitively do not! That would certainly make things easier!

AwkwardMD said:

Has anyone considered that all poetry rhymes if we just pretend it does? Maybe we could redefine "rhyming" to include things that definitively do not! That would certainly make things easier!

Click to expand...

Yay for postmodernistic reletavism

Making cognitive dissonance a viable reality since it’s inception

butters said:

Darkness is one of my favourite poems, definitely my favourite Byron poem.

Click to expand...

One of my favourites of his too.

whilst it doesn't have end-rhymes, there are sound-links throughout that, like a melody weaves through a song's tune and notes harmonise for cohesion, sounds do exactly the same thing in this poem.

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

look at all the d's, the E-sounds in that first line alone. in the second line there's a whole bunch of T's, S's, and the R sound in 'stars' goes on to link with the same in 'darkling' and even in 'pathless' (as spoken with the english accent it was written in)... there's a sort of slide along the scale between 'path' and 'earth' with the 'th's, 'space' and 'Rayless' are full of hard 'A's and soft S's, and then in the last line 'Swung' links with 'sun' & 'blind' which goes on to connect with all the hard I's in L's 1 & 2 & 4 ('icy'), and the 'n's in the last line harmonise with those dotted throughout the lines.

it's cohesive and complete and not an end-rhyme in sight, yet feels almost rhyming as one reads it.

Click to expand...

The technical term for that device is consonance (or assonance, when done with vowels). It's not rhyme as such, but you're right that it has a similar effect - I think of it as another way of pressing the same buttons.

The rhythm is important here. If you read the first line aloud, the emphasis naturally falls something like this:

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

It's very regular: weak-strong, weak-strong, weak-strong, weak-strong, weak-strong. (aka "iambic pentameter", one of Shakespeare's favourites.) You'll notice that the hard d-sounds you mentioned all fall on those stressed syllables, and the effect probably wouldn't be as powerful if they didn't.

In later lines, he plays with the rhythm a little, but it's still basically pentameter with some minor tweaks, and that consonance still ties in with the rhythm: "blind and blackening" etc.

So even though it doesn't rhyme, it's still a very classical style of poem that sits comfortably alongside his rhyming work.

Compare to something like Brian Bilston's "At The Intersection". To me, that's also poetry, and it also has a very exacting structure - but it's not one that Byron would have recognised, and it probably wouldn't have been meaningful to anybody before about 1880 when Venn diagrams were invented.

I think a lot of the hostility to non-rhyming poetry comes from a mindset of "write something stream of consciousness, put random line breaks in every few words, and call it a poem". But there's so much more to non-rhyming poetry, so many different ways to make it interesting.

Bramblethorn said:

I think a lot of the hostility to non-rhyming poetry comes from a mindset of "write something stream of consciousness, put random line breaks in every few words, and call it a poem". But there's so much more to non-rhyming poetry, so many different ways to make it interesting.

Click to expand...

It also has a place in prose, too. Shameless self promotion follows: I've received comments from several people over time that my stories have, "a flow that's almost poetic at times," "an almost poetic style," and one of things I'm very conscious of during edit is the beat and flow of my prose, the cadence and cascade, the rise and fall - and consonance and assonance, as you say, are a part of that (not always consciously, either, but that's how the words arrive on the page).

I think a lot of the hostility to non-rhyming poetry comes from a mindset of "write something stream of consciousness, put random line breaks in every few words, and call it a poem". But there's so much more to non-rhyming poetry, so many different ways to make it interesting.[/QUOTE]

I find this discussion surprising . Usually I see a snobbish looking down on rhyming poetry but it only matters if the poem is good not whether it rhymes. There is an infinite variety of poetry I think we should embrace any poem we enjoy

Tulips
To smile
Cups of colour
In a bouquet
Flower rainbow
Petals pose
For a smile
Tulips

A little girl woke and started to cry
Mum held her hand asked her daughter why
There's no magic ,dragon , unicorn
Like they have never ever been born

Her Mum paused and started to explain
Magic is everywhere even in rain
Rain said the girl magic don't think so
Mum asked then how can it make rainbows

Magic is all around, land, sea,air
Seeing without belief can be rare
In the wind the cry of unicorns
Dragons breath seen on the coldest morn

Magic is here, life full of wonder
Don't break the spell that you live under
Believe and magic will be your truth
Long after the passing away of youth

UnderYourSpell said:

Hello and welcome, I for my sins am one of the Moderators here
I don't think you'll find anyone here that condones plagiarism, I for one know mine has been stolen. Years back someone even sent me an email containing one of my poems and when I complained was asked what I was complaining about at least it was being read!!
Non-rhyming poetry is one of the many forms as shown in this thread The Thread of Forms and then there's been several Challenges plus Teach ins by myself shown here Here there be challenges
When I first came here I was rhyming everything too, and like you couldn't see the reason for non rhyming poetry, but I was taught by the best and urged to at least try non rhyming! I still write rhyming stuff at the drop of a hat and still have a great love for it!
I hope we'll soon see some of yours and that you'll accept critique and also learn that it isn't criticism but help to hone your art.
We still have Challenges and I hope to see you there, we don't bite
I'll probably move this whole thread over to the Poetry Feedback & Discussion section of the forum, where it will get a better airing.

Click to expand...

WOW! I'm overwhelmed. I have a lot of thinking to do. I would like to hang out here, I just need to think about it. My poems have been for a single audience, my wife. So, they are always appreciated. I'm much harder on myself that that. I think I have a small handful that I genuinely like and fee good about. I really appreiate your reply, the overwhelming reply of other poets. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.

electricblue66 said:

If by "borrowed" you mean plagiarism, my advice would be, don't even think about it. All work belongs to the writer, and copyright means it's theirs. I won't get into another endless debate about how enforceable copyright is (not very, unless the writer is rich), but it's the ethics of not using another writer's content that matters.

If by "borrowing" you mean themes and ideas, that's different. An idea can't be copyrighted, a particular expression of it (ie: someone's poem) can.

Free-form verse has been around for a very long time, non-rhyming poetry just as long. It's just a different poetic form, is all.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_verse

Click to expand...

Thanks Electric Blue - I know that folks borrow idea all the time, I just need to think about it. It's not like I'm trying to sell my poems (like, wouldn't that be awesome!) so I have to work through my feelings in my head and talk about it here to mindstorm my way through my feelings. Thank you for welcoming me. It means a lot to me.

Bramblethorn said:

If anything, it's the other way around. For much of history, non-rhyming poetry was the norm. Greek and Roman poetry rarely used rhyme, ditto early English poetry like "Beowulf". At some point around the Middle Ages, rhyme became popular in English, possibly inspired by Arabic poetry. But non-rhyming verse has always been around in English poetry.

For example, Byron usually wrote in rhyme, but he also wrote non-rhyming poetry like Darkness (1816). Yeats' The Second Coming was written in 1919, and Cummings' Buffalo Bill's in 1920. You may be an older guy, but I refuse to believe you're older than those poems

Click to expand...

Thanks, I do appreciate your thoughts - thank you for sharing them. I remember that poems in the New Yorker used to rhyme and then I went a long time since looking at them again. Now, most all of them don't rhyme and I feel a bit like I'm not getting it. I would love to continue talking about this here.

I'm short on time today, but will read and reply to all the messages. Please be patient with me.

CamronsInsider said:

Thanks, I do appreciate your thoughts - thank you for sharing them. I remember that poems in the New Yorker used to rhyme and then I went a long time since looking at them again. Now, most all of them don't rhyme and I feel a bit like I'm not getting it. I would love to continue talking about this here.

I'm short on time today, but will read and reply to all the messages. Please be patient with me.

Click to expand...

One thing that took me a long time to learn is that it's okay not to get everything. Poetry is complex and the way it affects people is going to depend on their own experiences.

I love that Brian Bilston poem I linked to, but to somebody who grew up without learning about Venn diagrams it probably doesn't mean very much. I love my cat, so Pangur Bán resonates with me; one of my friends comes from a country where keeping pets is considered weird and a cat is a dangerous thing that might bite you, so when she first came to Australia it was hard for her to relate to the fact that people love cats and spend so much money on them, let alone write poems about them.

So sometimes we're not going to understand other people's poems, not without some work. Even the Byron poem we were discussing, Darkness... it made an impression on me when I first read it, but it's more powerful now because I understand more about what was on his mind when he wrote it.

Byron wrote that poem in 1816, which was an exceptionally grim year - crops froze, people starved, it was called "The Year Without A Summer", because of a massive volcanic eruption in Indonesia that affected the climate worldwide. It was also a hard year for Byron for other reasons - he'd just exiled himself from Britain after the failure of his marriage and a major scandal, so he would've been sad and bitter. That bitterness probably colours "Darkness" - he always had a cynical streak, but it's particularly strong in that poem.

Somebody reading Byron's poetry at the time of publication would be well aware of those things. For me, reading it 200 years later, they're not obvious, and I have to do a bit more work to understand what's behind that poem. The same would apply if I'm trying to read modern-day poetry by somebody who comes from a very different background. Sometimes I'm able to do that work and appreciate what they're saying; sometimes I just have to tell myself "this poem wasn't written for me, and that's okay, other people get to have their own poetry too".

(Right now, I'm learning German, because there are songs I love that are written in German, and it's hard to fully appreciate them without knowing the language. That's a LOT of work, though!)

But one option for understanding is to share with other people. I'm not a regular in Poetry Feedback & Discussion, I just dip in occasionally when I see something I want to respond to, but I expect the regulars would be welcoming of a discussion if there's a poem you don't get.

Bramblethorn said:

One of my favourites of his too.



The technical term for that device is consonance (or assonance, when done with vowels). It's not rhyme as such, but you're right that it has a similar effect - I think of it as another way of pressing the same buttons.

The rhythm is important here. If you read the first line aloud, the emphasis naturally falls something like this:

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

It's very regular: weak-strong, weak-strong, weak-strong, weak-strong, weak-strong. (aka "iambic pentameter", one of Shakespeare's favourites.) You'll notice that the hard d-sounds you mentioned all fall on those stressed syllables, and the effect probably wouldn't be as powerful if they didn't.

In later lines, he plays with the rhythm a little, but it's still basically pentameter with some minor tweaks, and that consonance still ties in with the rhythm: "blind and blackening" etc.

*snip*

Click to expand...

all of this, yes different rhythmics can predispose the brain to immersing itself more fully in the imagery presented, whilst the very nature of the sounds themselves can attune the reader to the emotional context within a piece, sort of like the music that used to accompany old silent movies

electricblue66 said:

It also has a place in prose, too. Shameless self promotion follows: I've received comments from several people over time that my stories have, "a flow that's almost poetic at times," "an almost poetic style," and one of things I'm very conscious of during edit is the beat and flow of my prose, the cadence and cascade, the rise and fall - and consonance and assonance, as you say, are a part of that (not always consciously, either, but that's how the words arrive on the page).

Click to expand...

yes yes! poetic prose can work very well, though i'd say some genres like detective/police stuff may not benefit so well but needs grounding in more direct, grimmer(?) phrasing.


it may be worth your whiles to look up cognitive poetics if you are not yet familiar with the concept.

CamronsInsider said:

Thanks, I do appreciate your thoughts - thank you for sharing them. I remember that poems in the New Yorker used to rhyme and then I went a long time since looking at them again. Now, most all of them don't rhyme and I feel a bit like I'm not getting it. I would love to continue talking about this here.

I'm short on time today, but will read and reply to all the messages. Please be patient with me.

Click to expand...

welcome to the poetry forum

for most people, their first introduction to poetry comes in the form of nursery rhymes and dr. seuss, 'twas the night before christmas, or in the rhyming of christmas carols. there's room for all manner of poetry in the world, and if your audience is happy with your writing then great... but broadening your poetic horizons isn't gonna hurt you any, i promise.

butters said:

welcome to the poetry forum

for most people, their first introduction to poetry comes in the form of nursery rhymes and dr. seuss, 'twas the night before christmas, or in the rhyming of christmas carols. there's room for all manner of poetry in the world, and if your audience is happy with your writing then great... but broadening your poetic horizons isn't gonna hurt you any, i promise.

Click to expand...

Also the school system has taken a massive dump on art and literature so you get basic, basics and you aren’t taught to engage with and deconstruct a poem with any degree of aptitude it’s why people assum rhyme is poetry and also the relativistic claim that everything is poetry

butters said:

it may be worth your whiles to look up cognitive poetics if you are not yet familiar with the concept.

Click to expand...

Whoa! I think my head just exploded!

I reckon I'll just keep on writing my stuff the way I do, without having a theoretical clue, and leave it up to somebody else to say, "Did you know this is what you're doing?"

Glad to have someone new that wants to write and my best advice would be to just run amuck. There is a weekly challenge based on different themes. Hope to see you there.

electricblue66 said:

Whoa! I think my head just exploded!

I reckon I'll just keep on writing my stuff the way I do, without having a theoretical clue, and leave it up to somebody else to say, "Did you know this is what you're doing?"

Click to expand...

I'm with you! for goodness sake can't we just enjoy poetry without analysing the hell out of it?

UnderYourSpell said:

I'm with you! for goodness sake can't we just enjoy poetry without analysing the hell out of it?

Click to expand...

..
Not in bed yet? or up early?

AwkwardMD said:

Has anyone considered that all poetry rhymes if we just pretend it does? Maybe we could redefine "rhyming" to include things that definitively do not! That would certainly make things easier!

Click to expand...

Years ago I was an aspiring art major. That didn't last very long. But, I completely appreciate the thought.

Bramblethorn said:

One of my favourites of his too.



The technical term for that device is consonance (or assonance, when done with vowels). It's not rhyme as such, but you're right that it has a similar effect - I think of it as another way of pressing the same buttons.

The rhythm is important here. If you read the first line aloud, the emphasis naturally falls something like this:

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

It's very regular: weak-strong, weak-strong, weak-strong, weak-strong, weak-strong. (aka "iambic pentameter", one of Shakespeare's favourites.) You'll notice that the hard d-sounds you mentioned all fall on those stressed syllables, and the effect probably wouldn't be as powerful if they didn't.

In later lines, he plays with the rhythm a little, but it's still basically pentameter with some minor tweaks, and that consonance still ties in with the rhythm: "blind and blackening" etc.

So even though it doesn't rhyme, it's still a very classical style of poem that sits comfortably alongside his rhyming work.

Compare to something like Brian Bilston's "At The Intersection". To me, that's also poetry, and it also has a very exacting structure - but it's not one that Byron would have recognised, and it probably wouldn't have been meaningful to anybody before about 1880 when Venn diagrams were invented.

I think a lot of the hostility to non-rhyming poetry comes from a mindset of "write something stream of consciousness, put random line breaks in every few words, and call it a poem". But there's so much more to non-rhyming poetry, so many different ways to make it interesting.

Click to expand...

This is WAY too complicated for me. But, that suggests I can learn something here. Thank you!!!

Madelyne13 said:

I think a lot of the hostility to non-rhyming poetry comes from a mindset of "write something stream of consciousness, put random line breaks in every few words, and call it a poem". But there's so much more to non-rhyming poetry, so many different ways to make it interesting.

Click to expand...

I find this discussion surprising . Usually I see a snobbish looking down on rhyming poetry but it only matters if the poem is good not whether it rhymes. There is an infinite variety of poetry I think we should embrace any poem we enjoy

Tulips
To smile
Cups of colour
In a bouquet
Flower rainbow
Petals pose
For a smile
Tulips

A little girl woke and started to cry
Mum held her hand asked her daughter why
There's no magic ,dragon , unicorn
Like they have never ever been born

Her Mum paused and started to explain
Magic is everywhere even in rain
Rain said the girl magic don't think so
Mum asked then how can it make rainbows

Magic is all around, land, sea,air
Seeing without belief can be rare
In the wind the cry of unicorns
Dragons breath seen on the coldest morn

Magic is here, life full of wonder
Don't break the spell that you live under
Believe and magic will be your truth
Long after the passing away of youth[/QUOTE]

You're making me think. I appreciate that. Muchas Gracias!!!

You're making me think. I appreciate that. Muchas Gracias!!![/QUOTE]


I agree with many people here who have pointed out there has always been free verse. The premise of the original question is flawed.

There is no universally easily understood way of defining the difference between prose and free verse. It is easy to identify poetry with a rhyme scheme, so that may lead to it receiving greater acknowledgement.