Introduction

Sometimes—okay, often—poems surprise us. Just when you think you understand what a sonnet is, you discover a writer like Ted Berrigan, who has an entire book of sonnets that break all the rules.

Two common oddities in poems are poetic inversions and … well, poems that don’t rhyme.

Let’s tackle inversions first. Poetic inversion is a feature of lots of writing, not just poetry. “Bang, bang went the drum,” “green were my jealous eyes,” and “cool was the summer breeze” are all examples of inversions. In these examples, the adjectives are inverted from their typical position in the sentence. A poet might use inversions to adopt an archaic tone; a poet might use inversions to support or disrupt a rhyme scheme or metrical pattern; a poetic might use inversions to craft a line with an unusual or unexpected emphasis; and a poet might use inversions to play. Regardless of why the inversion exists, it usually contributes to the poem’s overall meaning.

Another thing that might surprise you about poems is that they don’t need to rhyme. All poems rhyme: this is probably the single greatest misconception about poetry! In fact, these days most poems do not rhyme. Other poetic devices, such as repetition and imagery and alliteration, are more commonly used to drive a poem.

Poetic Inversions and Poems that Don’t Rhyme

Poetic Inversion

Poetic inversion, or changing the usual word order of speech, is often linked to the need to maintain a rhythm or to find a rhyme. The song “Dancing in the Street,” first recorded by Martha and the Vandellas in the 1960s, does violence to word order in the interests of rhyme – “There’ll be dancing in the street/ A chance new folk to meet” – but, because the words are sung to a driving rhythm, we are unlikely to notice how awkward they are. There’s a convention that we recognize, however unconsciously, that prevents us from mentally re-writing the line as “a chance to meet new people.” (“People” rather than “folk” would be more usual usage for many, but this would mean that the rhythm too would be lost.)

The following video introduces the concept of Poetic Inversions .

Poems that Don’t Rhyme

Are poems that don’t rhyme prose? Not necessarily. Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), a novelist rather than a poet, and T.S. Eliot (1888–1965), known particularly for his poetry, both wrote descriptive pieces best described as ‘prose poems’. These look like short prose passages since there is no attention to line lengths or layout on the page, as there was, for example, in ‘Mariana’. When you study Shakespeare you will come across blank verse. “Blank” here means “not rhyming,” but the term “blank verse” is used specifically to describe verse in non-rhyming iambic pentameters.

Although iambic pentameters resemble normal speech patterns, in ordinary life we speak in prose. You’ll notice if you look through Shakespeare’s plays that blank verse is reserved for kings, nobles, heroes and heroines. They may also speak in prose, as lesser characters do, but commoners don’t ever have speeches in blank verse. Shakespeare – and other playwrights like him – used the form to indicate status. It is important to recognise this convention, which would have been understood by his contemporaries – writers, readers, and audiences alike. So choosing to write a poem in blank verse is an important decision: it will elevate the subject. One such example is Milton’s epic Paradise Lost(1667), a long poem in twelve Books describing Creation, Adam and Eve’s temptation, disobedience and expulsion from Paradise. It sets out to justify the ways of God to man, so blank verse is entirely appropriate.

The following video discusses Poems that Don’t Rhyme. 

Introduction to Literature. Licensed under CC BY SA 4.0 https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-introliterature/chapter/approaching-poetry/

Novak, J. “Poetic Inversions.” https://www.powtoon.com/online-presentation/g3G08vnHJg7/poetic-inversions/

Novak, JoAnna. “Poems That Don’t Rhyme. https://www.powtoon.com/online-presentation/eJlDBnLchSd/poems-that-dont-rhyme/?mode=movie

Summary

As you can see, poems may have many rules—for example, haikus or sonnets—or they may have very few. By understanding that poets have the freedom to play with language, though, you’re well on your way to being open to whatever poetic experience a writer brings you to.

Remember that poems do not need to rhyme. This is a really tough preconception to shake, but the sooner you can stop searching for rhyme, the quicker you can get to appreciating all the other tools writers use to create poems. Often, we’re used to rhyme because of the poems we learned as young children—or because of the lyrics of songs we enjoy. While many contemporary poets do use rhyme in their work, typically that is not the predominant feature.

Poetic inversions might, at first, throw you for a loop. You might see them as difficult; you might wonder if a poet is being intentionally obscure. Rest assured that poetic inversions, which aren’t all that exclusive to poetry, usually have a clear purpose. In order to figure out what that purpose is, though, you need to practice being a close reader of poems.