[New-Poetry] Alicia Stallings on rhyme

[Bob Grumman]

Michael Snider wrote:
> http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/feature.html?id=182841
>
> She's my hero.  An excerpt:
>
> -----------
> All rhymed poetry must be rhyme-driven. This is no longer to be 
> considered pejorative. 
>
> Rhyme is at the wheel. No, rhyme is the engine. 
>
> Rhyme is an engine of syntax: like meter, it understands the 
> importance of prepositions.
>
> English is not rhyme poor. It is only uninflected. On the contrary, 
> English has a richness in rhymes across different parts of speech; 
> whereas in many other languages, rhyme is often merely a coincident 
> jingle of accidence. 
>
> There are no tired rhymes. There are no forbidden rhymes. Rhymes are 
> not predictable unless lines are. Death and breath, womb and tomb, 
> love and of, moon, June, spoon, all still have great poems ahead of them. 
> --------
>
> Huzzah!
I like what she says.  I think bad rhymes aren't the fault of the . . . 
rhymenants, I call them, but of their placement.  "love/above" is often 
a bad rhyme not because of the two words but because "love" is misplaced 
in order to get it where it can end-rhyme as in "Give your love/ to God 
above."  Or rhymes can be too expected and therefore very irritating due 
to the triteness of the poem they're in.  If a poet has a "you" at the 
end of one line, then immediately brings in the sky, you know "blue" is 
gonna come up.

Also, she exaggerates.  I think great rhyming poems are in part driven, 
have to be driven, by rhyme, but the can be driven in part by other 
things--and should be.

What I like most is that she makes it clear she's talking about "rhymed 
poetry," not "poetry."

--Bob
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