I just have a quick question regarding meter and rhyme schemes, like whether poets still do them or if all forms of poetry are written in free verse instead. It seems to me, based on what I've been reading, that free verse prevails. And apparently there are different poetic forms each with their own meters and rhyme schemes, however I'm sort of under the impression that nobody really writes them anymore these days. Duly noted, virtually all of the poetry collections I own are classics--and my exposure to contemporary poetry is rather scarce, since I'm not all that knowledgeable as of right now how to read it. I'm vaguely aware of different literary magazines out there, but not a whole lot, no.
There's nothing like reading what's out there to know what's out there. But to answer your question, you will still find poetry written in form. McSweeney's used to publish a sestina every Friday (I think it was Friday). And let's just say contemporary poetry hasn't forgotten it's roots. Sometimes people who don't know the different forms might not recognize them all. And I think that's sort of what you want when you're writing poetry in form. You want the form to seem to have a subtle or even invisible presence. It's certainly not all free verse.
Poetry has evolved and will continue to do so. I think it's fair to say not much 'traditional poetry is written these days, but if that's what you want you're still spoilt for choice... just as long as you're happy to accept most of it won't be modern.
Of the poetry published in the New Yorker magazine, the overwhelming majority is free verse. (That's the only source I'm exposed to these days, since the San Francisco Chronicle no longer posts poetry in its Sunday section.) The only rhyming poem I recall seeing in the New Yorker was one written, not surprisingly, by songwriter Paul Simon.
I'm kind of just asking out of curiosity, I'm not saying form is better than free verse, it just sort of strikes me as peculiar that Poetic Forms lasted for centuries until falling out of fashion quite recent as far as world history is concerned. I'm gonna keep writing in free verse though, this was sort of just a passing curiosity is all. I think Poetic Form fell out around the early 20th century with the Modernist, and it's been that way ever since. I'm gonna look into some literary magazines down the line, just not quite yet. The classics will hold for now.
It could be said that poetry itself lasted for centuries, but as Robert Claiborne commented on the state of poetry in the seventeenth century: "Yet the day of poetry as the major art form of English writing was clearly done. By Alexander Pope's time in the early eighteenth century, what we see is only poetry in the technical sense: in fact it is a series of rhymed epigrams, though often quite good epigrams. Already, and despite brief revivals in the early nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, poetry was well on the way to becoming what it is today: a distinctly minor branch of English letters." (from Our Marvelous Native Tongue) But if rhymed and metered poetry is no longer showing up in literary circles, it's all over the place in songwriting, which is where poets go today to find their audience. And, like Paul Simon, they display work that is dramatic, lyrical (perhaps in its truest sense), and effective. John Prine, Leonard Cohen, and Jackson Browne come most readily to mind, and there's that guy who just won the Nobel Prize in Literature ... Bob something. And rap, while it isn't my cup of tea, is continually stretching the limits of its art form as poetry. So I wouldn't say that free verse is the sole survivor.
Further to what @JLT has said, the likes of Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell and DH Lawrence were forming the Imagist Movement as far back as the early 1900s. It was a revolt against the 'flowery' traditional poetry of the Victorians. History shows that rhyme and meter still prevailed in spite of their efforts to change things, but it also shows that now is far from the first time it's fallen out of favour.
No. Plenty of poets write formal verse or use formal techniques. You probably haven't noticed because you don't read poetry; I mean, you probably don't go into a bookshop and think, 'I'm gonna by me some contemporary poetry collections and really enjoy reading them!' (Which you actually admit!) The best poets today can write formal verse that sounds fresh, that uses a syntax and diction native to the living language. Many would-be poets have the absurd idea that 19th c. poetry is somehow a standard bearer for poetic forms. As a result, they write stale, awkward pastiche that contributes very little to the contemporary poetry culture. If you want to be a good poet, write in the living language. See what poets are doing today. So go out and buy a contemporary collection. Check out Don Paterson for an excellent example of a living poet who uses formal techniques.
Roger McGough is another who gets a lot of mileage out of rhyme and formal rhythm schemes, although this snippet shows he wasn't restricted to it:
I'm prolly just gonna experiment with it in my more lyrical pieces, and when I do, I don't think I'll follow it all the time. Mish and Mash I guess.
I write what's on my heart, screw form. Sometimes it's structured, sometimes it's not. I do plan on challenging myself with writing challenges that require a school taught/historical form though.
They don't require school teaching, but it helps. They do require in depth reading though. I don't know of any "historical" form, but I assume you're referring to the epic narratives, tragedies, and comedies of ancient past? Or something more on the freeform of the romantics? The modernist objective correlation? Really, it just involves a lot of close reading. I suggest looking at old structural guidelines, and closely reading to understand how the structure effects pacing, and clearly take in the metaphors and figurative language. I like discussing poetry of different periods and trying to emanate the styles and forms. They are challenging, but rewarding in attempts.
I write whatever feels right at the time for the poem at hand. I tend to stick to more traditional patterns but if there are specific templates for specific ones I don't know/use them
Poetry in general has fallen out of favor with the general Anglophone public. The section of the population that still reads poetry for pleasure is pretty tiny (and I suspect a lot of them are poets). And within that very small pool it’s true that free verse is king. But again it’s a small pool. If you write poems you like, and a handful of other people like them too, then your audience is probably not much smaller than a lot of “serious” poets getting published in this or that journal. Just write what you like. There is also a handful of small publications that specialize in or accept formal verse, ranging from modernist to neo-romantic or gothic/ weird.
I dont understand how something can be considered poetry without some sort of form. Sometimes it seems like free verse is just the brainstorming for a blank verse poem.
The majority of published poetry is definitely free verse these days, but there's plenty of more formal work out there, too, and not just in tiny journals dedicated to it. For instance, the 2020 winner of the Rattle Poetry Prize was a pantoum. The odds are against you if you write formal verse, but they're far from zero.
Every free verse poem is its own form. The rhythms, sounds, etc of each line are determined in accordance with the needs of the specific poem.
That's the theory at least, though I find too many people make excuses based on artistic license - i.e. every point of criticism is refuted by saying 'it's intentional in order to create x effect', and the same thing can be said for a lot of free verse poets who don't 'get' metre. They give no thought to the form whatsoever and say they're creating their own form. All that said, I'm not against free verse at all. One big advantage is that you can immediately spot a bad free verse poem. A bad formal poem can still hide behind its metre and convince people that it's good. Free verse has flexibility going for it in that you can toy around more, but the lack of formal structure can make it go all over the place. I find different poets do different styles better - Yeats famously wrote one whole free verse poem in his life (despite spending a whole lot of time with Pound at one point!) and absolutely detested it. To Pound, meanwhile, formal poems were a constraint and his poetry could vastly better when he dropped it. But no matter whether a poet uses a traditional form or not, one thing seems to be consistent among good poets: an understanding of form.
I don’t really subscribe to good and bad, at least not in a technical sense. I don’t care how perfectly a poem is written, technically and in whatever form, if it fails to evoke something within me, it’s failed overall. I’m not going to like a poem just because an ‘expert’ tells me it’s a technically ‘good’ poem.
They need to understand form and I would argue, moreover, they need to love language. That seems an odd thing to say- of course writers love language- but I get a sense with a lot of poets and other writers that they see language merely as a necessary evil, a means to express certain sentiments, and as long as the sentiment is conveyed then any configuration of words is suitable. Which leads to a lot of poems composed of flat or hackneyed phrases. The form and the content are really indivisible. I don’t think poets can ever fully get on board with Zhuangzi’s assertion: The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you have the fish, you can forget the trap. Words exist because of meaning, once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words.
One limitation of formal, rhymed verse specific to English letters: the dearth of available perfect end rhymes in English, relative to some other languages. Rhyming English poets often have to strain after rhymes in a way that, say, French, Italian, or Chinese poets don't. This can lead to a lot of awkwardness or clichés. One way to work around this is to allow slant rhymes (Emily Dickinson loves these) or assonant rhymes (which are now ubiquitous in song lyrics). But for a long time such techniques were generally frowned upon in English literature.
This. Consider William Carlos William's poem "Red Wheelbarrow." Poetry is the difference between: and
That's a good point. As I've mentioned elsewhere, the poet John Ciardi was faced with a problem when translating Dante's Divine Comedy, which consists of rhymed triplets throughout. He said that in Italian, it seemed that "everything rhymes with everything else." For the English translation, he decided to rhyme only the first and third lines of the triplet. That gave him more latitude in re-casting the words into English while still conveying some of the flavor of the rhyme. And Seamus Heaney pretty much gave up on adhering to the original alliteration of Beowulf. Instead, he concentrated on the impact of the verse rather than a strict transliteration. I've always found that poets to a better job of translating poetry then linguists. They understand that their jobs extend far beyond the use of a translating dictionary.
I believe at least one English translation of the Divine Comedy (was it Pinsky?) uses slant rhyme and it worked well as I recall.
