Why Don't Modern Poems Rhyme, Etc.
Frequently asked questions about the business of verse.
1. Sometimes I see a poem in Slate or another magazine, and it doesn't do a thing for me. Half of the time I can't figure out what it means—what is that all about?
Generalizing won't do. We'd have to discuss a particular poem. At times prominent magazines publish things that aren't very good.
Magazines sometimes make me think of four lines the 18th-century actor David Garrick wrote as part of his poem praising poet Thomas Gray. About a certain kind of reader, Garrick wrote:
The gentle reader loves the gentle Muse.
That little dares, and little means;
Who humbly sips her learning from Reviews,
Or flutters in the Magazines.
2. Isn't so-called "free verse" just prose chopped into lines?
Read the following aloud, listening to the vowels and consonants, the sentence movements:
William Carlos Williams, "Fine Work With Pitch and Copper"
Wallace Stevens, "The Snow Man"
3. How come modern poets don't write in rhyme?
Read the following aloud, listening to the vowels and consonants, the sentence movements:
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Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky is Slate's poetry editor. His Selected Poems is now available.
"Fine Work With Pitch and Copper" by William Carlos Williams from Collected Poems: 1909-1939, Volume I © 1938 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. "Still Life" and "The Reassurance" from Collected Poems by Thom Gunn © 1994 by Thom Gunn. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Caution: Users are warned that this work is protected under copyright laws and downloading is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or transfer the work via any medium must be secured with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. "I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl" by Emily Dickinson reprinted electronically by permission of the publishers and the trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the president and fellows of Harvard College. "Silence" by Marianne Moore reprinted by arrangement with Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., from Complete Poems by Marianne Moore © Marianne Moore, 1935. "America" by Allen Ginsberg from Collected Poems 1947-1997 by Allen Ginsberg © 1956, 1959 by Allen Ginsberg, © 2006 by the Allen Ginsberg Trust, reprinted with permission of the Wylie Agency Inc. and HarperCollins Publishers. "Fear" by C.K. Williams from Collected Poems by C.K. Williams © 2006 by C.K. Williams. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Caution: Users are warned that this work is protected under copyright laws and downloading is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or transfer the work via any medium must be secured with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux."Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden reprinted from Angle of Ascent by Robert Hayden © 1966, 1970, 1972, 1975 by Robert Hayden. With the permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company Inc.