from Sherman's Lagoon

People today write in all kinds of forms: sestina, rap, dub, blank, haiku, sonnet, ballad, fridge magnet and more. But what one person calls poetry, another doesn't. Poetry is a big umbrella but there's some pushing and shoving over who can stand under it.

Judging from poetry journals and school text books, the highest prestige poetry continues to be free verse. Has rhyme fallen out of favor? Why? Let's take a look see and see what we can see.

No Rhyme?! That Ain't Poetry
I have heard over and over again -- a discomfort with modern English poems as though they are vaguely heretical. Like "new math" half a century or so old, it seems to some, inscrutable."When I went to school we studied poetry; it rhymed. It's not poetry if it doesn't rhyme" [Canadian senior]. Or, "To me this poetry my daughter is given in school in Canada is not poetry. In my language [Ukrainian] poetry rhymes."  "It has no good sound. I don't understand this." [Chinese man]

A quick answer to my ESL newcomers on why this thing in front of them is called a poem, and doesn't have rhymes, would be English has relatively fewer words with the same endings. Rhyme isn't a good match with English the way it is with Italian. Small rhyming families make English less suitable for the form, Shakespeare notwithstanding. Rhyming in English is complicated by the nature of English -- such a mish-mash of borrowed words and thus exceptions to word stress, making a cadence more difficult to set, nonetheless it has been done by Robert Frost, W.H. Auden and others.

It is far from a solid explanation. So I earnestly tack and explain that rhyme is an aspect, just like beauty, word stress or assonance. Rhyme is not the entirety of poetry. And yet it is an aspect that is representative of the ballad, sonnet, rondeau, rondel and other closed English forms.  Rarely does that clear up the issues. In fact, it doesn't rhyme, as often as not, is remarking on there being no soothing plod or canter forward movement of meter as much as there being a lack of rhyming couplets.

When people don't see rhyme and exclaim that's not poetry, they are understanding poetry as a form and it is more than a form or an element of a form such as rhyme. Some intuitively understand that the essence of poetry is not form or even words when they describe a senior couple dancing in love as pure poetry.

It gets me to thinking why should people not create these comforting plays of sounds as they used to? Are we too sophisticated or are we too undisciplined for all that lot?

Where Did it Go?
Well done verses with a rhyme scheme are pleasing and as valid as any other tradition. Yet few write like Tennyson or Browning now. Whereas my father was taught to memorize their poems, I was not even taught many of the classic names in passing in my education. Few of the poems published in Canadian literary journals rhyme. Is it just for sake of fashion that we are playing with more subtle melodies in free verse? Do we just want something closer to natural speech?  Condensed meaning but shorter sentences? Why is a lot of English poetry that gets  taught in schools not in couplet or other rhyming forms? Why are poetry slams (where the humorous turn, rhythm and rhyme of verse rules) such an isolated thing? 

Where have all the end rhymes gone?  Is there some inherant flaw that has been discovered after so long of use? Is this a knee-jerk reaction to Hallmark's market of rhyming verse and commercialism it personifies?  Or is it a matter of restless artistic temperament seeking fresh tramping grounds that his ancestors never knew? As in, rhyme -- Oh yeah, the old folks did that. And with the pendulum of generations, will our grandchildren with have an equal disdain for open forms? Or just a matter of new options opening and rhymes gettting dismissed with the short shrift? Is it a result of pluralism or some other societal shift?

What forces for change could be in play to take English rhymed Poetry out of favor?  This is the focus of my exploration.

Rhyming and Commercialism
Hayakawa  in Language in Thought and Action said poetry can be of two types: sponsored (advertizing as jingles and more subtle use of beautiful language and imagery for sales) or unsponsored. In terms of rhyme, because jingles for selling merchandise has been so ubiquitous, there's a strong association made between rhyme and defensive response against what a person doesn't want to buy. If we hear a rhyme, we automatically turn our ears off knowing it'll be for dish detergent. Perhaps the rhymed verse of amateurs picks up advertizing-block interference. Relatedly, poets who they see themselves as artists have a reputation for being free-thinking and therefore anti-establishment. Because multinationals are the current establishment and they like jingles, it isn't avant garde to use rhymes. But it has got to run earlier and deeper than that.

Poetry Kicked Out by the Classroom?
As the twig is bent, so the tree grows?

Sometimes the first exposure to Poetry on a page comes in school but rhyme is inborn, part of early speech as the child plays with language to self-teaches. Every child is exposed to the rhymes embedded in songs and poems. Yet at some point rhyme comes to be associated with childhood and baby verse. Unless poetry and literacy is cultivated by the child or in the home, no more poetry is known until a term here and there in later school. At that point how much weight is rhyme given? With the appearance of make-of-it-what-you-will here-is-my-soul-on -a-page or highly concentrated everyday language or shape poetry, or haiku formats, does rhyme lose face or become a face overlooked in the literary crowd?

Up until mid-century, emphasis on learning by rote included choral reading, recitation of memory work of poems and lessons in verse such as Columbus crossing the ocean blue. This came out of the needs of the one room school house. Homogenization of class levels materials for each student and wider materials available to teach all impacted the parameters to work with. New theories of learning (learning by projects and interaction, not by absorbing the dispensed wisdom) and a philosophy that questions and asks students to question whose history, whose perspective, whose stories have effects as well in what accept as expectations of poetry - the world widens and poetry with it.

Currently, the educational system in Canada stresses nationalism as diversity and pluralism.Canada as a quilt. Instead of learning poets important to the British Empire or Nation as in times previously, we get a rainbow of voices without time to delve into the cultural-social context that made a particular form rise. The power to control the curriculum falls not to a national body for the turning out of a uniform student/cultural product but to provincial standards, local school boards and the implementation of individual teachers. In this context, the liklihood of one common base of poetry reaching an entire population is slim. As a result any particular poet doesn't have the currency like Robbie Burns was able to have. Without this common base, poetry can be shared less, can be given less recognition and respect and therefore have less influence as far as making more on the same vein. 

Today what is valued is search skills because what we need is so diverse, there is no verse that can hold the dearth of information we retain on issues from around this changing world. This society is very paper-oriented and that means we depend on things visually. The memory aid of rhyme and recitation is less key because everyone has access to the paper or internet. We don't need our memories because what we need we can look up. In print the right word in the right order can be more important than the overall sound when it is only experienced in print. This may allow the unrhymed forms to have more weight.

Poetry Reflecting Societal Change
Even as students have continued to study literature, what Poetry is has changed. It was didactic to commemorate for posterity battles or personal milestones. When most people were functionally illiterate even in their scale of literacy needs, poetry was more esteemed. Since then, what it is to be "civilized" has shifted from being able to be an itinerant teacher reciting scriptures and entertaining with famous verse to a social field of more equal opportunity to be entertained in thousands of was, giving poetry, song and verse a smaller piece of the pie. Although occasionally some still write odes for birthdays and deaths, it is not as conventional as it was in days of people of leisure over a century ago.

What we write about now moves at a different speed, is intended to seat less deeply in the memory. Some are impressionists, others movie makers; it could be argued that our culture is as a whole moving away from steady-paced oral roots leaving behind story-telling, folk songs and poetry, it all being replaced by the spread of information-overload literacy, 2-income households, satellite TV and sound bites. But surely that would not rule out some poets taking a slower road less travelled and simply rhyming. Is the thing that's "wrong" with rhyme is that it takes time and practice and our western lives are infamous for addressing matters of urgency rather than importance? re: Hurry on now! Stop and smell the roses! Next tour! It sounds like a possible explanation but in rushed times, those who want will still take the time to slow down for their own health and haiku popularity has seen no decline. I would love to see some numbers compiled on how much of closed vs. open form verse are produced now across North America compared to say 50 years ago and 100 years ago.

Could preference for open forms or international forms be a by-product of our times in wanting to deeply understand, this itself an outshoot of a changing economic base that makes us need to be nimble, able to synthesize, integrate and flexibly apply. To suceed one needs to be able to crunch a lot of factors, see in grey not just black and white. Does that naturally lead us to assume a position of suspicion for anything that clicks, the way metered end rhyme poetry can, as simplistic and unlearned? 

Might free verse reflect society's move towards less binding formal structures of what must be, a reflection of the release from as social classes as they become more permeable and less relevant, and. although it swings unsteadily, tolerance and kindness are replacing racism and other forms of black and white thinking? Is it an opening of options as an outgrowth of this comfort with pluralism and multiple truths, that poetry too can be unbound from strict rules of behavior?

Why and Why Not Rhyme?
Poetry was, for a time, a formal art that required a register of language similar to leases and marriage ceremonies.It was grandiose with great truths, allegorical of God vs. Satan. All of these subjects and themes complemented the rhyme and meter schemes. At the other end of the register-spectrum was baudy limericks. But again rhyme and meter. Is it a matter of passive leisure these days and people don't leave themselves time to expand their attention span into longer creative works not to mention compose them. Salons and sing-alongs are largely gone and social expectation (i.e. individuals agreeing to add their consent to a perceived group) has made people believe that they can only be artsy or scientific and the well-rounded life is out of reach so people don't try. It's a theory. What do you believe?

Does this add up to explain the case of the state of poetry in Canada? Or are we just secret rebels railing against the world of rhyme? This point in history and place prides freedom of the individual, freedom of physical and intellectual movement.  Rhyme forces constraints into this freedom for all.   Rhyme can suggest directions and that it could drive the agenda may rankle against some.  It is very easy when rhyming to fall into a sing-song quality that fights against the intended serious, sad or contemplative tone. Getting caught up in rhyme and meter can suggest unnatural "poetic" words for the sake of the beat such as "oft'".

Rhyme can allow formulaic substitution verse in a society that gives greater status to craftmen custom homes than modular factory assembled trailer-homes. Maybe because verses with end rhymes can so obviously be trying when they clank, whereas with more subtle verse that fails, no loss of face is entailed when you said it was just a bit of creative expression. Likewise strong passion doesn't get the talk-back of the clickety-clack of metered verse.

Amateur rhymed poetry often has forced sour rhymes that shape meaning into awkward or pat corners or else is entirely predictable in plot from the get-go. No likes to be told what to think. We crave variety and intellectually complexity or minimalist simplicity. Extra words and simple meaning don't fit our desired mould. Then there is the emotive aspect. Verses that are led by rhyme we can often predict and tend to be ones that don't elicit empathy but we the readers are given point-blank descriptions of what someone we don't know feels. We won't invest ourselves emotionally in verses that easily rhyme off crocodile tears. We need to be very well primed to feel something. We like to pride ourselves on not being manipulated as a pawn, but at least be a savvy player in the game when we let ourselves play in Hollywood-made theatres.

The Rhyme, Reaction and Evolution of Verse
When evolution comes around we always have to be careful to understand that any change does not mean superior or more developed. A Gorilla branched off the genetic primate bush later than a chimpanzee, we believe, but that doesn't mean he is any more "evolved". The palm tree evolved earlier than the maple but that doesn't mean the Sally-come-lately is better. That said, I posit that open form verse came out of the older literature but does not replace it but each species or expression can live peaceably.

While wanting to show deference to our elders the next generations wants to both cling to and make a new settlement in in a new shape away from the image of a poet as a hard-drinking angst-ridden iconoclast or old school Pauline Johnson, James Whitcomb Riley, or the big dead white males' rhyming poetry which they were force-fed in school. The human mind needs newness and we are by nature nomadic. Even if we physically stay rooted, part of us aches to move away from at least the philosophical camp of our forefathers.

The poet community  as a tenuous collective does not recognize as one of its own or may disassociate himself from easy verse that rhymes. If we throw out a few babies with the bathwater, so be it. Rhyme doesn't jive with that Poetic identity as the vanguard for rigorous raw or tight creative revelatory expression.

The Market of Rhyme
So as literacy increased, and society lost the traditional ballads that were recited in families and in other social gatherings before the days of contact with fresh-made stories by Disney, Hollywood and imports from other cultures, we see more of a move to self-expression in writing. More people start their own newspapers, write articles and try their hand at formal verse. Are there quantifiable levels of quality that can be measured as surely as one can distinguish a set of French parlour doors from a few rough hewn boards nailed together into a swinging doorway cover. Do they serve the both purpose? Is there any harm in them both being called with the same word? Do we need to be generous of spirit to not disparage the maker of a poor door because of what he creates, or have the foresight to also see the potential for creating more if given circumstances that require more? Could end-rhyme or open verse be both the parlour door or the barn door?

What happens to supply and demand and market glut when most everyone and his brother jumping on board to proffer their produce? What happens to the value of the form when increased quantity rises? Who sets up apprenticeships? Regulatory board? What if there is no market in the same sense that there is for Mr. Henry's widgets? Can we copyright and sell poems the same as we can bottle and sell air?

Oh Rhyme and Reason
Many things are in play in the shaping of "poetry" today. Many voices are caught in the rain of words and many cloudbursts are still to come. With literacy and population higher than at any point in Canadian history before, it makes sense that poetry would grow. People of all ages are writing poems, and poetry supply of all types, is booming, however you judge their value. Even if rhyme's popularity wanes in one pocket of culture, it steadily grows elsewhere, is constant to a third,  in this country of individuals. Where you are standing, what do you see, more or less rhymed poetry and rhyming poets?