To Rhyme, or Not To Rhyme… That is the Question

The paper sat unmoving

spaced between us, facing me

Accusing, evidence for the trial.

“Why bother with these simple rhymes?

Why limit your choices to the 

Accidental last syllables 

Of a tiny list of words?”

She leaned back, arms

Folded across her chest, eyes

Fixed on mine, a hawk’s cold stare

Imagining the coming meal.

I sat frozen in the field

Unsure of what direction

My path to freedom lay.

It’s not about the words, I said

But something that is caught between

When couplets slip into my head

Connections begging to be seen

It’s not that two words end the same

Or meter forms a rise and fall

That dictates hard my poem’s frame

Or holds my writing hand in thrall

What makes me wonder, think and write

Is often serendipity

How words that rhyme line up just right

And juxtaposed, add clarity.

Her glasses slid downward

Resting just so, precariously 

Round frames on a sharp, tight nose. 

Her hands reach across the desk 

retrieving the offending words

Raising them up, as if seeing them 

For the first time, again.

“I see some talent, yes, I do

And that’s the point I’m making here.

All the best poets favor free verse,

That’s what the critics want to hear…

Suddenly scowling, annoyed, she

Pushed the paper away

“... or don’t you see?”

To win some critic, come in first,

Or sell some books, that matters not

I write to quench some inner thirst

I rhyme because it seems it ought.

Some seem to like that way I join

Some words together, line by line,

I care not if my works earn coin

Or others claim me less than fine.

I understand the points you make

And really wish to pass this course

But cannot now my muse forsake

And not to rhyme my writing force.

“Nonsense” she snapped

Eyes narrowed, jaw firmly set

“There is no reason why you cannot 

Simply apply whatever words that fit

Without matching their last sound”

Her arms refolded across the 

Front of her cardigan.

“The class was tasked a poem to write

In style free and verse to match.

This shouldn’t be so much a fight

You must comply, and with dispatch!”

The silence enveloped them both

Awkwardly, as she looked aside

And he looked at his shoes.

My point you make, I dare to say

How is a verse free if constrained?

When rules take my true voice away,

And to that set of rules I’m chained?

The theory, as I understand

Set by Beat Poets long ago

Was that we give our hearts command

And critics wants the old heave-ho

If what I wrote was what I meant

And rhyming is how it came out,

Is not that free verse’s intent

Is that not what it’s all about?

“I teach, you learn, that is the rule

I’m tired of your argument

You play me as if I’m a fool

My patience now has all been spent.

Who are you, child, to question so

The style and fashion of the day

Your rhyming thing was status quo

In times long past, lands far away.”

But teacher, rhyming’s all the rage

Think rap, think songs, think Dr. Seuss

There’s rhyming everywhere this age

Cannot we simply call a truce?

“Now to your desk, I won’t be swayed

And write a poem that does not rhyme

Or a red F you’ll find your grade

And in detention do your time.”

A moment’s freeze, and then both laughed

Acknowledging her battle lost

She scrawled an A across his draft

And ruefully defined the cost.

“Now home you go, you’re in the clear

You’re happy now I only hope,

My brain is stuck in rhyming gear

I’ll have to wash it out with soap!”