Good times to write in rhymes

Steady rhyme and rhythm with no variations usually produce boringly predictably poems with a sing-song beat and end-line ping that sometimes prejudice readers (and other poets!) against rhyming poems of any kind. Nevertheless, rhymes have been popular for many, many centuries, and their echoing sounds continue to expand our options as poets, writers, readers, and people ready to learn.

Repetitive sounds help readers to remember the poems they like. Strong rhymes and a lively beat also help people of all ages to learn, relearn, or retrieve information. Therefore, poems with rhythmic rhymes can be very useful in helping children to learn new information or helping elderly patients and stroke victims to retrieve information and recover memories.

Effective rhymes emphasize thoughts and feelings. If rhymes happen to be key words at the end of the lines, the emphasis increases – again, making a poem easier to recall.

Sometimes poems with regular rhymes and rhythm readily sing their way into song lyrics and hymn ballads.

Poets with a strong sense of musicality – and poets who fret over where to break a line in free verse – may find traditional forms useful to study and liberating to write.

Poets who enjoy writing humorous poetry can often bump up humor with the drum roll of a strong beat and sound of true rhymes. If those rhyming words have three or more syllables, so much the funnier.

Amusing or not, end-line rhymes work best when active verbs and strong nouns add sense to each sentence.

Conversely, end-line rhymes usually do not work well when they consist of abstract concepts or weak words that cannot be pictured such as love/of/above.

End-line rhymes can become problematic, too, when they hinder creativity or the flow of ideas, locking a poet into rhyming words that torture syntax (sentence structure) or thwarting poets from developing their unique voice.

If you like to write in true rhymes but don’t like end-line jingles, enjambment will often soften the sound as you wrap a sentence around one line onto the next.

To vary sound echoes, slant rhyme and alliteration provide interesting substitutes for true rhymes.

For more help with rhymes, see these articles on The Poetry Editor blog:

• Freeing Your Verse in Rhyme
• Rhyme, rhythm, and reality: traditional English verse
• Unlocking clockwork rhyme

For lively discussions about rhyme and other aspects of poetry and being a poet, join the Poetry Editor Group on LinkedIn.

For one-on-one help with your particular poems - rhymed or not, get a professional Critique for a minimal fee from The Poetry Editor.

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© 2011, Mary Harwell Sayler, all rights reserved. Please do not use any of the above contents without permission.
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Title Tales: on finding effective titles for your poems

The other day a poet said he always starts a new poem with a title, which bothered me only because of the word “always.” Poems often do offer up their names by way of introduction to get our attention or coax us into taking the time to write down whatever follows. However, an effective title – for the poet and for the reader – generally acts as an open door. If, though, that door locks the lines too tightly before they have their say, the title can hinder the poet and also the readers from getting to know a poem beyond the nodding acquaintance of a name.

To give you examples of titles that seemed to work reasonably well, I scanned the list of poems I’ve placed over the years, and here’s what I found:

A title hints but does not give away the story. For example, my title “After Selling Joseph into Slavery” draws on a familiar Bible story to examine how Judah might have felt after he and his siblings sold the younger brother of whom they were so jealous.

A title might be one word, one phrase, or one long sentence that meanders into a poem. “The Middle-Aged Mother Goes Up, Up, Up in Iambic Pentameter with Champagne After” sets the stage for a rhythmic poem about my terrified then buoyant experience of riding in a hot air balloon.

A title entices but does not tease readers with fake labels. “Abracadabra” sounds like a magic trick but was actually the title rhat came to me for a light poem with a rhyme scheme of a, b, c, and d with r for repetition.

A title gives a poem a tag your readers can remember. “Bugged” tagged a humor piece about my efforts to kill a cockroach that just would not stay dead.

A title plays with words, sounds, thoughts, and symbols until the poet finds an appropriate name. As I stressed over a subject to write about, the title “Following the Brick Road” played with a Wizard of Oz symbol for finding my way home and writing about what I care about or know.

A title seldom repeats or replays what the poem says or shows. Using a title to repeat words or phrases in a poem usually seems like a waste of space! Nevertheless, I entitled a poem “Wait” to emphasize something my religious readers (and I) often need to consider. Apparently the title had the desired effect because the poem has been accepted and published over the last fifteen years by five different editors, but see what you think. Better yet, read the poem aloud and, hopefully, you will hear why I chose to repeat a word from such a short poem for the one-word title:

Wait!

Wait for God to respond.
He hears.
He turns toward His crying child.
He reaches down into your clay crib
and brings you up, high,
high,
into His bosom.
He sets you on His shoulder.
He jostles you on His knee.
And when you're comforted and quiet,
He holds you closely
and teaches you to speak,
to pray.

© 1996, Mary Harwell Sayler, all rights reserved.

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If you need help finding titles or almost anything else for your poems, consider getting a professional Critique for a minimal fee from The Poetry Editor.

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© 2011, Mary Harwell Sayler, all rights reserved. Please do not use any of the above contents without permission.

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