Electricity or Insanity (was Song of Electricity)

[JohnLott]

Thank you Tom,

vanGogh gone is also a complete re-write - with no rhyming this time.



J.

[Arian]

rhyme is off the menu now.

John, old thing, I think you may be labouring under a misunderstanding. You're (reasonably but mistakenly) looking for blacks and whites, when poetry consists only of greys.

To be less gnomic, rhyme isn't off the menu at all*. It's just that the way it's used has changed, that's all. Rhyme can be - and is - used extremely effectively, even in the most modern poetry. You need to stop thinking that there's a set of rules out there, which - if you apply them correctly - will deliver a poem we'll all love. Such a formula doesn't exist.

The annoying irony is that you can't just write any old thing, either! There are rules, but they're few in number, far from universally agreed and all ill-defined (at best). How you produce a good poem is up to you, but you're unlikely to succeed by trying to reduce the art to an algorithmic process.

Cheers
peter

* Many people consider Larkin to be the Father of the modern poetic paradigm. He used Rhyme extensively. Oh, and - small point - brilliantly.

[JohnLott]

Thanks Arian.

I understand that.

The point, somewhere earlier in the discussion, was that Ros suggested that I dump rhyme to say what I felt in order to develop as a poet.

I appreciate what you said - and I still use rhyme - much more selectively now though.



J.