Why Rhyming Poetry?

 

First let me say, Poetry in a worldwide language found in every nation of the world. According to Dr. LATHA VELAVAN Asst. Professor of English, In her article The Study of Poetry (find article link below) "Poetry is the first type of literature found in all the nations of the world. It enables people to read and understand other branches of Knowledge. Philosophers and historians started writing their works in poetic forms." (ph. 27). Her article is 37 pages long, but well worth the read; very enlightening. Did you know in Greek the word poet means, maker or creator. I wanted to put that whole bulleted section of her article, but it would have been way too long. Basically in that section of her article, she is giving a synoposist of a critic of poetry and a fan of poetry squaring off. The fan does a very good job in showing the advantages and superiority of poetry: "Conclusion: Sidney has established the superiority of poetry over other branches of learning. He has shown that poetry both instructs and delights. It delights by moving the readers. He has refuted the charges of its critics and proved them to be baseless. He asserts that poets are divinely inspired and poetry has a divine music. Poetry confers immortality upon its readers" (Velavan, ph. 48).  Sir Phillip Sidney was a 15th century poet and defender of poetry. Further along in her article she presents Samuel Johnson, a well know English writer and contributor of  English history, who defends Shakespeare in stating, "Shakespeare is above all modern writers, the poet of Nature, who holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life" and "He understood that his audience preferred action to poetry. His genius produced the greater part of his excellence and transformed the English stage. ". (Valavan, phs. 153 & 176). Shakespeare wrote many poems in one of my favorite poem forms, the Villanelle. Although, he did not create that poem form he was brilliant at creating poems in that form. That form consist of a fixed and an exclusive rhyming pattern that can be a challenge to adhere to; I enjoyed learning. Further along in Velavan's article, T.S. Elliot, a famous 20th century poet had this to say about poets and the writing of poetry, "According to Eliot, poetry is not turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion, expressing not the personality of the poet but escaping from it. The personality of the poet must be extinguished and his emotions must be depersonalized. The poet has to surrender his personality to reach the impersonality. The poet becomes successful only when he acquires historical sense. This will help him to be conscious of the present along with the moment of past. He could understand and fully conscious of what has extinguished already and what is existing at present." (Velavan, last paragraph). 

Eliot's analogy of writing poetry as it refers to the expressing of emotions by the poet is probably the closest I could come to explaining why I write poetry. For me, it is an escape. I don't write poetry for the art of it, nor for the desire to become rich and famous. You see so much of that reasoning today, that poetry has lost it's integrity of its original contribution to language; it's contributing purpose to society. My poetry isn't always at it's best. As a matter of fact, some of it is pretty bad. However, I still get it on paper and in print out of the need for expression and out of the need to move past whatever emotions I am feeling at the time. It is my emotional language. And, I don't speak in rhymes when I talk, as you can see in the writing of this post. But, the jingle, jangle of rhyme gives my up and down, and back and forth emotions a place of occupancy; an emotional escape route. I recall hearing somewhere, don't remember where, that rhyming poetry is a challenge in making it make sense. Even though, to some, my poetry may be hard to grasp in understanding, I think, with the right lenses, it makes sense; somewhat, anyway. And, rhyming poetry came easy for me during my The Rhyme It Out Project! book series where I learned of two forms of rhyming poetry that I liked and enjoyed. I felt an explosion of emotional escape during that project, so much so that I developed my own rhyming form. I now produce poems-when I produce as my emotions warrant-in the form I created. Rhyming poetry for me has been and will continue to be my outlet from the emotional drama of the ups and downs of life. Rhyming poetry, for some, can be a learning curve, but when one includes the dramatics of life in putting those emotions to practicing rhyming poetry, one may find it to be an emotional escape for one's self, as well. 

Here's the article I referred to in my first paragraph of this post. It's long, but an interesting read. 
The Study of Poetry, by Dr. Latha Velavan