To all the “non-poets” out there!
by cricketjeff on November 1, 2007. © Jeff Green, All rights reserved
Free verse is fine, if really good
If you can write that way you should
But there’s one thing, and you should know it
Without metre and rhyme, you just ain’t a poet!
“Rhyme is too cramping, stifles the muse”
The free verse writers are bound to accuse.
But all it may mean if you can’t write a rhyme
Is you don’t know the words, or you don’t spend the time.
Millions of words make English the Queen
The finest invention, communication machine
Hundreds of phonemes, so rhymings abound
What ever you say, then a rhyme can be found.
From Shakespeare to Belloc and Chaucer to me
From the best to the worst, we all do it you see
So if you’re a poet, and the jobs worth your time
Then stop writing prose, and start writing rhyme!
Author notes
Option Alpha – premium rhyming poems which utterly bash the “art” of free
verse,
OK it’s not really a bash, and I do like some free verse, but I so rarely see
the difference between free verse and prose. I like prose!
But then perhaps the best rhymer of all time was W S Gilbert, and the Limerick
is the rhyming poetry best know to man, he wrote
There was an old man of St Bees
Who was stung in the arm by a wasp
When asked if it hurt
He replied no it doesn’t
I’m so glad it wasn’t a hornet!
A contest entry where free versers and rhymers were invited to start a war.
English