Why Don’t Poems Rhyme Anymore?

By Maddy Higgins

Why don’t poems rhyme anymore? Chances are if you’ve glanced at a poem written anytime after 1900, it’s probably not going to follow rigid rhyme structures or have any kind of rhyme at all. Indeed, most modern poetry falls under the category of “free verse”, or “open form”, meaning that it does not follow a predetermined rhyme scheme, a stanza structure, or metrical rules.

When free verse gained popularity in the US in the early 1900s, it stirred quite a lot of controversy; most poetry at the time fell under the category of “formal verse”, which, if you haven’t guessed, follows a more traditional rhyme scheme and meter. 

For example, here is an excerpt from a free verse poem, “Philomena” by Matthew Arnold:

“Hark! ah, the nightingale—

The tawny-throated!

Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst!

What triumph! hark!—what pain!”

In contrast, here is an excerpt from a more formal verse poem, “The Lockless Door” by Robert Frost:

“It went many years,

But at last came a knock,

And I thought of the door

With no lock to lock.

I blew out the light,

I tip-toed the floor,

And raised both hands

In prayer to the door.”

As you can see, “Philomena” is much looser in its stanza structure, rhyme, and meter.

Of course, the difference is not nearly as black and white as I may be making it to be; especially recently, poets tend to choose which “rules” they want to follow and when, and often play with form in unconventional ways to support their poetic ideas.

History of Free Verse

The emergence of free verse’s popularity is typically associated with the modernist movement of the mid-19th to the early 20th century, in which artists across all forms were experimenting with art and breaking the rules. One example of this among poets is the imagists, who wrote free verse poetry about specific objects and images, sometimes only in a few lines. 

For example, read T. E. Hulme’s “The Embankment”:

“Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,

In the flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.

Now see I

That warmth’s the very stuff of poesy.”

To be clear, just because a poem is written in free verse doesn’t necessarily mean that it has no rules or structure – all a poem has to do to be categorized as free verse is to not adhere to specific rules related to meter and rhyme.

The free verse poetry movement really kicked off with Walt Whitman’s book Leaves of Grass (1855), which consisted entirely of unmetered, unstructured poems. At the time, his work shocked critics and was frequently described as chaotic and even anarchic.

Here is an excerpt from “Song of the Open Road” by Walt Whitman:

“Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,

Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,

Strong and content I travel the open road.”

At the same time, Arthur Rimbaud, a French poet, was creating his own vers libre, structured based on natural spoken inflection rather than syllable stresses. Matthew Arnold, an English poet and critic, also jumped on the trend and wrote many unrhymed, unconventionally structured poems.

This newer, looser form of poetry rapidly became the more popular type of verse by the mid-20th century, and since then, the majority of poetry has been written in free verse.

New Formalism

The free verse movement would not come without pushback, however. At the beginning of its popularity in the 1850s, Robert Frost, a prominent formal verse poet, famously commented that poets who wrote free verse were “playing tennis with the net down”, insinuating a kind of laziness and refusal to play by the rules. His opinions were echoed by other traditionalists of the time. 

Personally, one flaw I find in this argument is that it assumes that meter, rhyme, and stanza structure are the only ways to structure a poem to make it better. The specific nitty-gritty rules that were created by early English Elizabethan poets don’t have to be the ones that we play by forever, right? 

Anyways, the pushback against free verse was dwindling as it became the dominant form, but it would come back in the 1980s with a new movement: new formalism, or neo-formalism, is a modern-day movement that advocates for a renaissance of more structured, metric and rhymed poetry. New formalists argue that these rules help poets write more vividly and musically and that writing within structure prompts creativity.

This sentiment is surely echoed by 18th-century English poet William Wordsworth in a sonnet, which is famously one of the most rigid forms of poetry. He writes in “Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room” that there is both comfort and freedom within the rigidity of the form:

“and hence for me,

In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound

Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;

Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)

Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,

Should find brief solace there, as I have found.”

Never mind that by the 1980s free verse was the overwhelming majority, the New Formalists rallied behind their cause. Interestingly, the positions have switched; now, the formalists are the radical minority while the free verse poets have become the norm.

New Formalist poets include Brad Leithauser, Timothy Steele, Molly Peacock, Phillis Levin, Marilyn Hacker, Mark Jarman, and Dana Gioia.

However, completely unsurprisingly, New Formalism quickly became one of the most disliked poetic schools. Granted, many New Formalists didn’t do much to make their cause likable; they frequently positioned themselves as a righteous revolt against a convention that has abandoned crucial poetic tenets – not a great look when many already thought them ridiculous.

Most criticized New Formalist poets for sacrificing good poetry for a hyper-lens on form, and as a result, writing worse poetry. However, this specific critique isn’t entirely deserved, as those considered “New Formalists” were not a homogenous group, and each poet had individual views on poetic structure.


Indeed, poet A. E. Stallings, who has in the past been critiqued as a formalist, argues in her article “Why No One Wants to Be a New Formalist” that adhering to poetic structure isn’t an inherently anti-creative choice. She also iterates that people who critique New Formalists usually are combating a mindset they consider to be conservative and regressive, instead of the actual poetic form. 

Stallings comments that “I write best… when I write against the constraint and pressures of form – any constraint, really.” She also states that she isn’t anti-free verse, but does see the value in formal verse and how it can facilitate creativity.

Nowadays, an annual conference at West Chester University founded by aforementioned New Formalist poet Dana Gioia celebrates form by holding workshops on how poets can better utilize traditional craft.

Sources:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-dont-poems-rhyme-anym_b_97489

https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-free-verse-poem-4171539

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/free-verse

https://poets.org/text/brief-guide-new-formalism

https://ctlsites.uga.edu/poeticskewels3050/new-formalists-literary-nerds-societal-rejects/

https://oxfordre.com/literature/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-513

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2007/11/why-no-one-wants-to-be-a-new-formalist

https://allpoetry.com/The-Lockless-Door

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48859/song-of-the-open-road

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44432/the-embankment

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52299/nuns-fret-not-at-their-convents-narrow-room

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