ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

• English is not a good language to rhyme in
• Rhyme is so artificial that it suggests insincerity
• Rhyme changes what you first thought of
• Rhyme draws too much attention to itself
• Rhyme has a ‘Look Ma, no hands!’ quality which serious poetry does well to avoid


Found this while surfing the poetry web .


Bob

Bob. I think that use of rhyme can lead to these drawbacks, however, the challenge for the poet who wants to use rhyming in their verse is to manage their work so that these difficulties are overcome.
It just requires a lot of effort. A lot of hard work and thought.

I disagree partly with the first statement. English is not bad or good. It is just short on rhyming words and one has to search with great difficulty to make rhyming work in English.
Clive James has recently published his translation of The Divine Comedy by Dante. This work is a poem of over 500 pages of rhyming quatrains in iambic metre in English ( from Italian). It can be done and done well as Clive James has proven.

What are the good languages to rhyme in?

Bob Pacey wrote: • Rhyme has a ‘Look Ma, no hands!’ quality which serious poetry does well to avoid


Bob

So I must look a bit funny saying "Look Ma(??) . . . no hands!" when I've still got my training wheels on

As Neville said . . . they are all potential liabilities to the rhyming poet, but that is the challenge as we grow and improve. A far greater challenge than just writing what you want or think ie. free verse or writing in a more rhyme-friendly language.

Marty

ps. there goes my serious free verse poem titled "Look Ma, no hands!" about a young boy and a tragic sawmill accident

I think Bob was being tongue in cheek weren't you Bob.
"Bush Poetry" may have expanded re the subject matter but the criterion of having accurate rhyme and metre is what we are upholding within the ABPA. There are plenty of other outlets for other poetic forms (and non-forms) elsewhere.

There's a great article in Wally Finch's last eMuse (on line newsletter) by Jenny Jeays. I loved it - knockers be gone!
Wally will willingly send eMuse to anyone free every month, just contact <wmbear1@bigpond.com> and ask for the October edition.

lol
(both ways in this instance - lots of love AND laugh out loud)
Brenda

I occasionally just go scrolling the web for poetry sites and some of the stuff that you turn up!


Well everyone to their own I say


Bob

Stephen. Italian is a "good" language to rhyme in.
It has lots of words ending in, eo, etti, otto , otti, ero , are....and so on .
Dante's Divine Comedy was written in terza rima which is fairly easy in Italian. Clive James said that he found terza rima impossible to sustain in English so he used quatrains ( four line stanzas ) rhymed as abab for his translation.

If you want to look up terza rima and try to do this rhyming scheme in an English verse you will find out how difficult it is to find many rhyming words in English.

Heard about the poor survivor of a horrific crash? When he woke up in the hospital bed he called out, "Doctor doctor, I can't feel my legs!" To which the doctor replied, "Of course you can't, I've cut your bloody hands off!" ...

Rhyme does draw attention to itself, that is true. This can be a good or a bad thing, depending on what you are trying to achieve.

As a general rule, rhyme works best for extroverted writing - Banjo Paterson was not a particularly effective navel gazer.

Free verse is generally introspective. It fits the form.

Horses for courses.