Is there a term for this, or is it simply something a competent poet is able to pull off? Take Thom Gunn's Tamer and Hawk. Mainly in iambic trimeter unless I'm mistaken, but far from concrete in either. I thought I was so tough, But gentled at your hands, Cannot be quick enough To fly for you and show That when I go I go At your commands. Even in flight above I am no longer free: You seeled me with your love, I am blind to other birds— The habit of your words Has hooded me. As formerly, I wheel I hover and I twist, But only want the feel, In my possessive thought, Of catcher and of caught Upon your wrist. You but half civilize, Taming me in this way. Through having only eyes For you I fear to lose, I lose to keep, and choose Tamer as prey.
Not sure there is a term because they aren't necessarily correlated 'tools' of poetry... but regular rhyme (as in: end rhyme) is usually associated with a traditional metre, of course. I might of course be wrong... Personally, I feel as though the use of end-rhyme without a regular metre almost always looks and feels cumbersome and clumsy - in other words, as though the poet has no idea what s/he is doing. There are a few exceptions of course, but usually I'd stick with irregular internal rhymes/half rhymes in free verse. Gunn's poem is very regular - don't know why you'd quote it in as an example (as nice as it is)?
No, it wasn't a good example on reflection. I just wondered about the change from trimeter to dimeter in the last line of each stanza. Even then it could hardly be called irregular as the dimeter is consistent. Better let this thread die. It was a knee-jerk reaction to a single poem that doesn't even serve as an example to my question anyway, and that's because I didn't study it closely enough before asking the question.
