deepundergroundpoetry.com
The Necessity of Rhyme
"Milton wrote verse
and was so full of hope to please."
My dear J-Z,
I wonder if you know
your hero Milton held
that poets who, like you,
believed that for a writing to be poetry
its lines must be
set out with rhymes
were talentless
and only, in their efforts to put down
entrancing words upon a page
showed themselves to be
dilettantes and jangelers
who had no grasp of how it was
that one achieved poetic art
since rhymes,
he said, were the invention of
a barbarous age
to falsely dress up wretched verse
as if it was
in substance and in grace
sublime.
https://tinyurl.com/ycxf8xux
and was so full of hope to please."
My dear J-Z,
I wonder if you know
your hero Milton held
that poets who, like you,
believed that for a writing to be poetry
its lines must be
set out with rhymes
were talentless
and only, in their efforts to put down
entrancing words upon a page
showed themselves to be
dilettantes and jangelers
who had no grasp of how it was
that one achieved poetic art
since rhymes,
he said, were the invention of
a barbarous age
to falsely dress up wretched verse
as if it was
in substance and in grace
sublime.
https://tinyurl.com/ycxf8xux
Published 16th Dec 2022
| Edited 6th Jul 2023
Author's Note
My inspiration for this is J-Z's insistence that a writing that does not contain rhyme cannot be poetry.
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
likes 1
reading list entries 0
comments 8
reads 170
Commenting Preference:
The author encourages honest critique.
Anonymous
16th Dec 2022 7:52pm
That's silly. J-Z is weird. He drank some kind of wrong colored kool-aid if you ask me.
Does he really claim Milton to be his hero?
Does he really claim Milton to be his hero?
16th Dec 2022 8:14pm
"Does he really claim Milton to be his hero?"
By implication.
See this inscrutable verse from one of his latest attempts to be profound.
The breath we move will have a stop.
A hundred years pass like a wink.
Just yesterday, Milton wrote verse
and was so full of hope to please.
https://deepundergroundpoetry.com/poems/468599-faith-can-fight-everything/
:
By implication.
See this inscrutable verse from one of his latest attempts to be profound.
The breath we move will have a stop.
A hundred years pass like a wink.
Just yesterday, Milton wrote verse
and was so full of hope to please.
https://deepundergroundpoetry.com/poems/468599-faith-can-fight-everything/
:
Anonymous
- Edited 17th Dec 2022 00:27am
17th Dec 2022 00:26am
Interesting 🫤
I shall have to check it out when next I'm doom scrolling later this evening.
I shall assess his words for veracity.
Not. But I shall most certainly assess them.
😑 Lord! The foolishness people get up to these days, mm''mm.
I shall have to check it out when next I'm doom scrolling later this evening.
I shall assess his words for veracity.
Not. But I shall most certainly assess them.
😑 Lord! The foolishness people get up to these days, mm''mm.
16th Dec 2022 10:09pm
There's an entire generation convinced that poetry must be composed of metered words and rhyme and they are backed up in this conviction by the Oxford English Dictionary.
As often as not these are the same folks who spent too much time in a uniform or a Sunday school.
But I take their point, and indeed I enjoy rhymes as part of my own poetry, but I do not compose thusly simply to please this older generation or the long dead Editors of my Old Oxford. As much as I enjoy poetry there is the far more important matter of being in possession of a truly open and judicious mind. Sometimes the content needs to conform to its containment, and sometimes it must break the bonds of form and reveal its content no matter what, and who among us is truly qualified to be the final arbiter of what poetic virtues actually are? Can someone just piss in a Dixie cup and call it art?
I don't think it's a secret that a lot of artists learn the rules so that they can make a point of breaking them, but beauty is not only created in pioneer terrain. The structured stanza, like the combination lock on an old safe, may be spun in countless new ways before resorting to differing elements of construction. Milton, Byron, Alexander Pope, and many others were masters at this, but the clock and calendars move ever forward into the new verse composition arenas of the future, and tradition must continue to prove itself of value, or find itself in the trash heap along with all the other things we have given up on.
I, for one, am curious to see what folks come up with.
As often as not these are the same folks who spent too much time in a uniform or a Sunday school.
But I take their point, and indeed I enjoy rhymes as part of my own poetry, but I do not compose thusly simply to please this older generation or the long dead Editors of my Old Oxford. As much as I enjoy poetry there is the far more important matter of being in possession of a truly open and judicious mind. Sometimes the content needs to conform to its containment, and sometimes it must break the bonds of form and reveal its content no matter what, and who among us is truly qualified to be the final arbiter of what poetic virtues actually are? Can someone just piss in a Dixie cup and call it art?
I don't think it's a secret that a lot of artists learn the rules so that they can make a point of breaking them, but beauty is not only created in pioneer terrain. The structured stanza, like the combination lock on an old safe, may be spun in countless new ways before resorting to differing elements of construction. Milton, Byron, Alexander Pope, and many others were masters at this, but the clock and calendars move ever forward into the new verse composition arenas of the future, and tradition must continue to prove itself of value, or find itself in the trash heap along with all the other things we have given up on.
I, for one, am curious to see what folks come up with.
16th Dec 2022 10:35pm
Have you seen J-Z's apodictic statements about what a writing has to display if he's to accept it as poetry?
Have you seen his claims about how and why what I post is not poetry?
Have you seen his claims about how and why what I post is not poetry?
No not all of it, but I've run into that sort of "poet" before and a cursory analysis of the content will indicate, with no small degree of psychosis, that the sky in their western world is falling and it's all the fault of China. Sometimes poetry confirms our suspicions about an author's declining neurological state, and we must allow their troubled psyche to fade into oblivion with some measure of dignity.
For real entertainment in this area go check out The Society of Classical Poets, where you will soon discover that their "poetry" is mostly a kind of enthusiastic hatred for anything that smacks of free verse, and the concomitant rage against all things leftist that come with it. They don't seem to sense how ugly hatred is, no matter how much you dress it up in rhyme and meter.
Pitiful.
For real entertainment in this area go check out The Society of Classical Poets, where you will soon discover that their "poetry" is mostly a kind of enthusiastic hatred for anything that smacks of free verse, and the concomitant rage against all things leftist that come with it. They don't seem to sense how ugly hatred is, no matter how much you dress it up in rhyme and meter.
Pitiful.
Anonymous
- Edited 17th Dec 2022 00:31am
17th Dec 2022 00:23am
.0 that's such a good point! A star of J-zs monetary caliber entering into some form of physiological neurological decline is gonna be able to continue on functioning as a star with a voice and a platform long after they would have "once upon a time back in the day" been checked and removed from their platform by others. This on account of the big stars agency being so buffered now by their money (and the changing nature of "platform") as for their syntax to remain unchecked long past the point at which it becomes "stupid."
Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes
Anonymous
17th Dec 2022 00:33am
I will check that Society out when next time doom scrolling later this evening.
☝️Not pitiful, just misguided
☝️Not pitiful, just misguided
