You most certainly can improve a free-verse poem by introducing an element of dramatic tension into your conception.
However, in metrical verse, the tension is already there (in a sense). Look at Shakespeare's sonnets: see if you can tell how he interplays tension and slack from line to line, quatrain to quatrain, then to the final couplet.
Food for thought?
The Drama of the Phoneme
I remember getting funny looks from my fellow English majors (and alums, later) when I talked with enthusiasm about my Phonemics class.
Not everyone felt it was odd, but some did. Phonemics is the study of what phonetically gives a language its meaning. The "bilabial fricative" made famous by the late (and lamented) George Carlin is phonetic, but not phonemic (well, formally, anyway).
From at least the Renaissance, writers on poetry have been fascinated by the subject. Especially, which phonemes fit their aesthetic, and which do not. Dante wrote about it (I read a translation of the book, De Vulgari Eloquentia, as an undergrad. For fun. No kidding.), as have others.
The funny looks came more from the free-verse poets. That's natural. A Jackson Pollack is going to look pretty much the same in oil as it does in tempera, or just wall paint. It's the materials of the unconscious that are important in that particular aesthetic practice.
Now, Pollack fans are going to assail me over that, as would any free-verse fans: the details do matter to them, they might say, just not in the same way. That's OK: Diversity is important.
But to the formal poet (even part-time), the technical details of what, say, makes a "d" sound like a "d" are also important, as what certain phonemes sound like in combination, also.
As well as the "supra-segmental phonemes." (The wha ... ?)
In English, they are: stress, pitch and juncture, as best I recall. Which makes for a dramatic language, don't you think?
Rhymes in Time
To me, the art of choosing rhyme words is less about finding a word at the end of a line that says what you want to say and, to boot, sounds a lot like another word in an earlier line. It's more about finding the word that does do that, but also sets you to thinking.
I was looking earlier today at a poem about someone getting a new knife. It's great song-like poem that has a nice twist, and it explores that twist a little.
One end word was "glint." The poet didn't rhyme that word (though he did others), but he could have, thought I. He could have chosen "hint," "tint," "stint," for instance. Each of the words would have ended up dramatically changing the course of the poem's meaning.
For that particular poem, it would have been a bad idea. But that's not always the case.
Sometimes choosing a rhyme that ends up changing the entire course of the poem can make something run-of-the-mill a lot better. I've found that it can improve the entire poem, in fact.
The idea is to stick with good rhyme sounds at the start, ones that give you the most possibilities. In other words, stick with rhyme sounds with the most words in standard English.
"Glint" i'nt one of 'em. So the poet did the right thing in that case.
Words that (merely) end in "-ing" or "-ion" don't count. There are reasons for that, and I'll go into why another time.
You can get a rhyming dictionary to help you find those good rhyme sounds.
Or, you can refer to a book I've mentioned earlier. It's one you might have: a copy of the sonnets of Shakespeare.
Why It's Hard ('cause ...)
First, you might want to glance at the previous two sections to make sense of this one.
Second, you might want to review this entire thing briefly to get a better sense of What This Is All About.
And Third, you might want to consider this: the physical sound of your poem becomes a lot more important once you start to rhyme.
Not to say that free-verse poems don't sound good. It's just that they don't have to sound "good" to the ear, necessarily, to succeed as a poem.
But euphony becomes crucial when you start to rhyme. Even if you want to make disharmonious sounds with words, you still must consider what sounds good before you make your words sound "bad."
Really good rhyme sounds are both numerous and euphonic. What's euphonic depends on you, naturally. And your aesthetic. And your taste. And your critical ear. And your ... .
All the stuff I've been talking about, in other words. In combination. All at once.
See now why it's hard?
Down the Road We Go
Rhyming sits at the summit of the euphonic art. It's not just a trick or a tack-on to your traditional poem.
Like tires on an automobile, it's what meets the road as far as the sound of a traditional poem goes (or doesn't go). The ancient art of alliteration forms the axle, the urgent but gentle substructure of assonance the spoked wheel, but rhyme is the rubber on the road, the place where you feel the bump.
And like automobiles (or personal computers), traditional poems are evolutionary devices: the early "motor coaches" of the Model T and Benz era (and before) laid the groundwork for the latest Lincoln or Kompressor models. The new ones are faster and fancier, for sure, but essentially no different.
You may not write like Shakespeare or Chaucer (or need to), and you may not speak quite the same language, but you (and I) must drive the same highways.
Sound Weaving
Euphony has its place, especially among the discordant. If all you do is string pretty sounds together, you may have something nice-sounding, but meaningful?
You may need to blend the sweet with the not-so, weave wool into the silk, to get the right effect or to find the right word.
I guess that's why they call it "art."
The Seed's the Thing ...
A lot of what we do involves sequence. We choose a word, then another, and then another after that.
The meaning, the sound, the structure all must follow in a certain order. Not so in free verse. After all, it's called "free" for a reason.
What happens, in traditional verse, after we get to the last line?
"The End?"
Not necessarily. Sonnet sequences were common, once upon a time. As were sequences in "rime royal." Et cetera.
You don't necessarily have to narrate to establish a sequence. You need just a line of thought, a developing feeling, an insight. An intuition that grows into something bigger, like a tiny seed into a live oak.
Some say Shakespeare's sonnets, when unscrambled, tell, or at least imply, a story. Want more? Google "Sir Denis Bray."
Don't you love it when I give you homework?
Papa (or Mama), Don't Preach!
I remember one night in particular. It was "Open Mic" again, and, as usual, I was enjoying myself -- listening to great material and excited about reading my own.
Then, one well-intentioned, but (to me) misguided individual got up to read her work for the first time. A rhyming ditty in a semi-hip-hop vein, the poem meandered from her early wayward life to one of the straight-and-narrow.
OK, that was it, right? No -- that was just the preamble. The rest was a sermon in (not-very-well-done) rhyme. It seemed interminable, verse after verse.
Several minutes later (well past the courtesy limit -- and limiting in turn how long the rest of us could read), she finally concluded with an angry-sounding ... something.
I applauded, as did the others, just barely.
There's a place for what's known as "didacticism" in art. Teaching, rather than preaching, is allowed -- if you know what you're doing.
I feel that the work of (AFAIK) Alexander Pope wasn't preachy, and neither was (what I've read) of George Crabbe (though there were sermons implied in his work). Both are kind of hard to read for me, because the didactic tone, however well done, can wear me down pretty fast.
In general, I think we have to try and avoid both preaching and teaching. Expression is what we're looking for, and if, in that expression, we find something new we'd like to pass along, I think that's certainly OK. It's what we're all about, in fact.
But when we dwell on it ad nauseum, be it from the mountaintop or the pulpit, we are imposing on our readers' or listeners' time and trouble. And, usually, we are doing it from an attitude of arrogance (however unwittingly). That last is the real "tell," isn't it?
Who wants to listen to that?
But it's a temptation I think we, as poets, need to stay alert in avoiding.
The forum we're allowed can be such an easy trap.
(By the way, as I was editing this thing two days after pre-posting it, I realized I'd just fallen into the trap myself! See what I mean?)
A rose is still a rose (even a little one)
I'm not the biggest fan of "The House of Life," the sonnet sequence by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It's a Victorian-era classic, no doubt, but I just think Rossetti's real gift was for painting. That his verse was as good as it was is amazing.
However, I think one of his sisters was his superior when it came to the written word. Christina Rossetti is best known for a children's story (in verse), and for the words to a beautiful Christmas hymn.
However, this reputation does not convey fully her poet's skill and versatility. Allow me to provide at least this link to the treasure trove of high-quality verse this lady left us: Try the Dover edition of her selected poems or, perhaps better still, you might search your local bookseller for the Penguin Classics paperback of her complete poems.
She has several sonnet sequences of her own you may wish to explore.
Running from the Dog
It's a word for bad writing: "doggerel." My handy dictionary says it comes from Middle English and refers to "dog Latin" -- apparently an insult.
Non-scholars back in those days (I imagine) would have experienced Latin outside church in metrical form, for the most part. And bad meter would result in some pretty "dog-gone" poetry.
For our part, it's what we dread: being called a writer of "doggerel." We toilers in the "traditional" field can pluck some pretty rotten grapes (or apples, or peaches, or ... ) when we just don't pay attention to what we're doing in meter.
Almost always, your English doggerel is going to come out stepping too regular: ta-tum, ta-tum, ta-tum, ta-tum, ta-tum. Line after line after line of it just ends up sounding stupid or forced. Dog-gone it.
But highly irregular meter is going to be just as bad, in the sense of not sounding like verse at all. It's the insult at the other end of the metrical-insult continuum: "prosaic."
Where's the balance? OK, you have been scanning poems, haven't you? You have been scanning a lot of them, right?
You've nailed "Lycidas," and "In Memoriam" and a bunch of sonnets by now -- and you don't need me any more ... . (*sniffs away teardrop*)
Ta-TUM ta-TUM TUM-ta ta-TUM ta-TUM
It's called a "resolution."* What's above is only one of several possibilities. But you know that already, right?
___
*Note: The term 'resolution' actually belongs to classical prosody. The proper term in English prosody is 'substitution.' I use 'resolution' to remind readers of the movement from dissonance to consonance music.
Resolve it!
If you've been writing strictly iambic lines, please don't be offended by the last section. I was not calling your verse "doggerel."
But it's possible that others might.
It's all about (remember that section, dear readers?) sticking to what you feel is right. And, about making changes in what you're doing only when you feel it's good and proper.
Resolutions are ways to keep your verse interesting to readers. But there are reasons to keep things regular, in some cases.
For instance, I've been looking at verse for hymns pretty closely lately, and most of those I've studied come out in straight "ta-TUMs." They need to do that, I suppose, to fit the requirements of the musical measure.
Also, poems purposely written with a hymn-like feel will likely do the same (think Emily Dickinson, for one).
But perhaps it's nice to know the lines don't need to do that, as long as some simple guidelines are kept in mind.
And there's something you may want to keep in mind as well before those guidelines are approached.
Here it is: a caesura is a slight pause or break in a line of English verse. Shorter verse lines, such as the tetrameter or trimeter, usually leave that little pause at the end (usually alternating with period or semicolon stops).
Those of you who are studying pentameter verse may have noticed the caesura usually falls somewhere in the middle of that line.
I say "somewhere" because those of you who've been scanning pentameter lines probably have noticed that it's (fairly) rare for one of the masters (Shakespeare, Milton, etc.) to split that third foot in the middle with a caesura. So there's naturally some variation in where that little break goes, pentameter-wise.
It's considered a good thing.
Fundamentals
It's probably important to remember at this point to avoid taking things too seriously, in poetry writing and in life.
Writing poems in meter and rhyme needs to be fun at some point, even when you're not necessarily trying to be funny.
I just read something on a wiki that points to this: "Most people's deepest vocational passions fall within three categories: teaching, healing and creating."
Is there a better definition for the calling of "poet?"
I've written before on how relating experience in poetry can teach, how the craft of the poem can heal and how the power of creativity is, well, creative.
Doing good can be enjoyable. In fact, it should be.
So, go do some: write a poem.
And, don't be too self-critical, but remember: a poem must work for its audience as well as for the poet.
(Re)Solving the prepositional dilemma
The most useful resolution I can think of, besides the one I mentioned two sections earlier, is this one:
taTUM taTUM tata TUMTUM taTUM
or wherever you need to put it in the line.
English has so many prepositional phrases ("in a ... " "at the ..." "to a ..." etc.) that this one comes in very handy.
But, this use also has its demands: the poet likely will need a strong pair of one-syllable words (better known as "adjective" followed by "noun") to fit the TUMTUM that follows.
And that's just one example. Keep scanning!
Masculine/Feminine
One more, I think, on (mostly) pentameter resolutions. It's the last major one I know of (the others being variations on the first two):
taTUM taTUM taTUM taTUM taTUMta
TUM taTUM taTUM taTUM taTUM
This is really (for my purposes, anyway) a pentameter resolution from the Augustan Age. For instance, Shakespeare wasn't this persnickety. If a line had a "feminine" ending, so be it. He didn't (as best I recall) have an overwhelming need to "resolve" it with a TUM at the start of the next line. But if that next line rhymed with the "feminine" line, it had to measure out the same way.
taTUM taTUM taTUM taTUM taTUMta
taTUM taTUM taTUM taTUM taTUMta
Milton was the same in his rhymed verse, as far as I know.
You maybe can see by now these "resolutions" are also opportunities for a softening effect, just as the others I've mentioned can punch things up a little, or even shape them up some.
"Trochee trips from long to short ... "
The last resolution I'm going to deal with here is one you normally see in shorter lines of verse. It's really for trimeter, specifically trochaic trimeter:
TUM ta TUM ta TUM ta TUM
If you're writing a trochaic line, you pretty much need that extra TUM on the end of the line. There is no additional 'ta' at the start of the next line, either.
I'm not sure the name of this foot is all that important. But you need it in trochees, or your line just keeps on rolling down a winding staircase.
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