# Writing > Personal Poetry >  Help! Advice on non-rhyming poetry?

## Bii

Hi all,

I've been writing poetry for a little while now, but at the moment I'm having a little bit of a poetry drought. The reason for this is that I decided to write a non-rhyming poem - I've got ideas in abundance, but everytime I start no matter what I seem to do, somehow it ends up rhyming! I can't seem to help myself, I seem to have a mental block with it, but I'm determined I'm not writing another poem tha rhymes until I've written something half decent that doesn't. Does anyone have any advice on how to approach a non-rhyming poem and make sure it doesn't rhyme?


Thanks!

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## JCamilo

Well, in the same way that using words just to rhyme is wrong; using words not to rhyme must be wrong too. 

Anyways, perhaps all you do is go after less rhyming poetry, perhaps another language than english - japanese for example, where rhyming is something present - or moderm poets that care not for rhyming all the time (Maybe Pablo Neruda, Ezra Pound, Borges, - actually Ezra essays may be good for this)...

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## SleepyWitch

> Hi all,
> 
> but everytime I start no matter what I seem to do, somehow it ends up rhyming! 
> 
> Thanks!


hey these lines are great.. they sound very rhythmical to me, without rhyming... or maybe it's just because I've had too much coffee...

but *ev*ery *time* I *start*
no *mat*ter *what* i *seem* to *do*
*some*how it ends *up* *RHYM*ing

see you can do it  :Smile:

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## Pendragon

Poetic Advice

Poetry is something you have to let flow
Let your mind give you the music
But as you visit the worlds that no one else sees
In the end as ink plays with the paper
The flow and the beat can still ring true
Even if the words never rhyme at all...

Pendragon


My little poetic advice. Let it flow, use your keyboard like a piano, and dream like the melody of a song. The beat will be there; the words don't have to rhyme.

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## Countess

My view of poetry: go with your gut.
I'm more a lyrical poet (I think because of piano, singing and dancing, words have transposed themselves into beats) and prefer it over imagery.
Right now the current rage is imagery, imagery, imagery, but its popularity does not disqualify other modes. So, if you're beat-oriented like me, then beat away on your drum, and damn what others think!

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## brokenheartpoet

It takes a lot of work I do not like rhyming because it is hard to do I will give you example on how to write they are harder but worth the challenge : Broken pathways Star-crossed people thought to be together lost in the moment ,but going to quick dreaming but not living in reality Hurts so much that it aches to see with another Soon ,to be patch up That is not finished but tell what you think Bii

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## Bii

Thank you all for the advice - I'll take it on board, and give it a bash, and see what happens! 

Brokenheart - I found your poem a little difficult to follow because it's a continuous paragraph, but I like what I'm reading so far. Is this something you're working on?

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## brokenheartpoet

yes it is something i working on Bii

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## PrinceMyshkin

> Hi all,
> 
> I've been writing poetry for a little while now, but at the moment I'm having a little bit of a poetry drought. The reason for this is that I decided to write a non-rhyming poem - I've got ideas in abundance, but everytime I start no matter what I seem to do, somehow it ends up rhyming! I can't seem to help myself, I seem to have a mental block with it, but I'm determined I'm not writing another poem tha rhymes until I've written something half decent that doesn't. Does anyone have any advice on how to approach a non-rhyming poem and make sure it doesn't rhyme?
> 
> 
> Thanks!



Not much to it really. You get yourself going and resist the attempt at end-line rhymes. E.g.

* I THINK that I shall never see 
A poem lovely as a butterfly

A butterfly whose hungry mouth is prest 
Against the sweet earth's flowing nipple 

Poems are made by fools like you 
But me, Ill do just as I want to do*
No, that was bit of a slip at the end. Other way is to write your silly rhyming lines but leave off the last word! 

* I THINK that I shall never 
A poem lovely as a 

A tree whose hungry mouth is 
Against the sweet earth's flowing 

A tree that looks at God all 
And lifts her leafy arms to*
Etc. etc. Now close your silly rhyming dictionary and get to work!

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## ampoule

I rarely use rhyme in my poems, and when I do, I feel they are too sing-songy, like children's fingerplays, but with perhaps more adult content. The problem is, I can't explain to you how to do it.

This might help. 

Do you journal? 
Often, what I do, instead of writing paragraphs, I write one sentence per line.
It takes up space, but then,
I take up even more space by,
writing fragments.

Fragments,
Of writing spaced,
On lines of journals kept,
Make fine poetry.

It's worth a try.

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## Bii

Thanks again to everyone for the advice, I think I've cracked it (well, insofar as it is possible - there are still rhymes in my poems I find, but they're just a little more subtle).

Myshkin - I don't have a rhyming dictionary! Why pay for a book when the internet provides for free.......!

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## PrinceMyshkin

> Thanks again to everyone for the advice, I think I've cracked it (well, insofar as it is possible - there are still rhymes in my poems I find, but they're just a little more subtle).
> 
> Myshkin - I don't have a rhyming dictionary! Why pay for a book when the internet provides for free.......!


ii - you want rhyme, Dude(tte, if you prefer); you want a whole crash course in how to rhyme brilliantly, check this out

http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid...pril+Inventory

I do realize, of course, that you want to learn to write without rhyme, but you ought to enjoy this anyway. As for some non-rhyming stuff, I've probably quoted this elsewhere, but...

*All of creation is offended by this distress.
It is like the keening sound the moon makes sometimes,
rising. The lovers especially cannot bear it,
it fills them with unspeakable sadness, so that
they close their eyes again and hold each other, each
feeling the mortal singularity of the body
they have enchanted out of death for an hour or so,
and one day, running at sunset, the woman says to the man,
I woke up feeling so sad this morning because I realized
that you could not, as much as I love you,
dear heart, cure my loneliness,
wherewith she touched his cheek to reassure him
that she did not mean to hurt him with this truth.
And the man is not hurt exactly, 
he understands that life has limits, that people
die young, fail at love,
fail of their ambitions.*

Robert Hass, excerpt from "Privilege of Being," from Human Wishes

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## Bii

> *All of creation is offended by this distress.
> It is like the keening sound the moon makes sometimes,
> rising. The lovers especially cannot bear it,
> it fills them with unspeakable sadness, so that
> they close their eyes again and hold each other, each
> feeling the mortal singularity of the body
> they have enchanted out of death for an hour or so,
> and one day, running at sunset, the woman says to the man,
> I woke up feeling so sad this morning because I realized
> ...


This is lovely but sad. I hope you don't relate to this too much.

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## the silent x

my advice, write the poem as if you were making it rhyme, then pull out the thesaurus and find new words for the words that rhyme

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## PrinceMyshkin

> This is lovely but sad. I hope you don't relate to this too much.


It IS lovely, isn't it? It is why we (?) write poetry, I think: to say things that might be too painful to say otherwise. Thank you for your caring, but as Afro-Americans discovered long ago via the blues and their Spirituals, writing or singing about pain alleviates it, as if to assert that one has not been destroyed by it.

Do you know, for instance 
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
I'm goingto tell God all my troubles
Another Man done Gonesung (my preference) either by Paul Robeson or Odetta

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## ampoule

> It IS lovely, isn't it? It is why we (?) write poetry, I think: to say things that might be too painful to say otherwise. Thank you for your caring, but as Afro-Americans discovered long ago via the blues and their Spirituals, writing or singing about pain alleviates it, as if to assert that one has not been destroyed by it.
> 
> Do you know, for instance 
> Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
> I'm goingto tell God all my troubles
> Another Man done Gonesung (my preference) either by Paul Robeson or Odetta


Not meaning to break into your conversation but I have sung that many times. I taught an Advent study based on African American spirituals last year. Robeson, yes, but I really love Kathleen Battle.
Some of us write poetry to hide behind or to sort things out.

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## PrinceMyshkin

> Not meaning to break into your conversation but I have sung that many times. I taught an Advent study based on African American spirituals last year. Robeson, yes, but I really love Kathleen Battle.
> Some of us write poetry to hide behind or to sort things out.


Oh, Katherine Battle - Yes! And Jessye Norman! and Kathleen Ferrier! and Marian Anderson! And...and...and...

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