Is Rhyming Poetry Obsolete?

[Barney56]

I hope not...all mine is rhyming.

[stoppoppingtheP]

Maybe it's like fashion, and it'll all be back in a few years.

[Keith80]

I personally have very little taste for 'free verse' The last person to do this really well was Shakespeare. To write 'proper' verse with rhythm, meter and rhyme which scans properly is quite difficult, and is usually beyond most 'modern' poets. It is quite simply hard work. Much easier to scribble down some random thoughts which sound esoteric, with a few sexual references thrown in. My own preferred poets are Kipling, Tennyson, Keats, Dickinson, Yeats and Service. Their scansion is impeccable. I do admit to being rather intrigued by the art of haiku however.

[rssllue]

As long as it touches or entertains in some way, I enjoy "poetry" no matter how it is classified. But I hope that rhyming never goes away. It is my favorite!

[GandalfTheFey]

Some of the opinions expressed in here alarm me. I don't know how to poetry without rhyming 0.o

[Barney56]

Some of the opinions expressed in here alarm me. I don't know how to poetry without rhyming 0.o

Occasionally I have written poetry that doesn't rhyme..it's hard. Bukowski was one of the non-rhyming poets I admire.

[Melissa-C-Water]

I learned to like non-rhyming poetry after going to a few slams. Most who went up were terrible and talentless, but two of these performers were absolutely interesting and kept me engaged.
I do however love and prefer rhyming poetry. I think its harder to do. Making one sentence rhyme with another forces me to be more creative with my wording.

[JessicaLeigh]

Rhyming poetry is not obsolete. Rhyme is part of poetry's aesthetic, part of what allures. Poetry and song; they go together.

Plus, poetry is about working with limits, economy of language. The restrictions imposed by form are part of what makes the genre what it is, in my judgment. Obsolete? Nah. It's (a) good practice.

[Keith80]

Jessicaleigh: you make a very good point about poetry and song going together, and rhyme certainly IS one of the alluring things about 'proper' poetry, besides the emotion which can be evoked. Perhaps I like both poetry and opera because they are both so difficult to do well, but we can certainly appreciate it when that is done.

[Divya agarwal]

Rhyming, sometimes, results in unnecessary moulding of words.But having said that,i admit that a combination of rhyme and sense is my idea of a good poem.

[Ryan]

Free verse is now the most common form of poetry and even thought it doesn't usually contain full rhyme, assonance and other kinds of half-rhyme are used quite frequently. So my answer to this would be: no. Although, admittedly, full rhyme does often seem too contrived in poetry now that we're used to free verse, but it has its place; it really depends on the subject and type of poem. For example, sonnets are still very popular and even though it's very structured compared to free verse, good writers are able to make the poems fresh and not too forced.

[Ramona]

Personally I do like both rhyming and non-rhyming, depending on the poem. I probably favor rhyming poetry. I write mostly rhyming. I write mostly in the abab cdcd or aabb ccdd, etc. form. But I really like ababcccd eeffgggd form! To me this form is very soothing. I'm not sure I've ever written in this form, but I should try it. As a child one of my favorite poems was in this form. The title is "My Chummiest Dear" and it's still one of my favorites. And just the other day, I read a poem by John Keats, "In Drear-Nighted December," which has this rhyme pattern.

I don't think rhyming poetry is obsolete... at least for me it's not and I'm sure it never will be.

-- 18 Sep 2015, 10:48 --

I learned to like non-rhyming poetry after going to a few slams. Most who went up were terrible and talentless, but two of these performers were absolutely interesting and kept me engaged.
I do however love and prefer rhyming poetry. I think its harder to do. Making one sentence rhyme with another forces me to be more creative with my wording.

Melissa, for me rhyming poetry has been pretty easy. Sometimes I feel like I'm thinking in rhyme when I sit down and start to write a poem. I started writing poems in third or fourth grade and have been doing so off and on ever since. That's not to say that every rhyming line has always been easy, but for the most part, writing rhymed poetry has been a pretty natural thing for me to do. In fact, the opposite has been true for me. I had to work at writing non-rhyming poetry. I've written a very few of those and I didn't start trying them until I was far into my adult years.
Rhyming is the way to go for me!

[berrueta268]

Not sure,maybe people just don t know how to do it on a non boring way anymore.

[TheMusician24]

Personally I frequently write poems, some just as a way to communicate certain emotions I am feeling, others just as a reflection of nature, but in each I feel the need to make it rhyme. There is something about the flow of words that rhyme and how one can cleverly weave a poem that is not just interesting, but I feel, necessary. Now i also have writings that do not rhyme, but i do not have the same feeling of pride for those, because i feel anybody can write a free verse poem, but it takes critical thinking to communicate an message intelligently and have it rhyme beautifully. Do I think it is dead? No, but because nothing is a good as it used to be, I agree it is dying.

[Rebelpoet]

I think a lot of free verse has its own rhythm. I rhyme in my poetry without even realising. Personally I find a non rhyming poem quite odd.