h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Unless the blank verse has a regular rhythm it is just a bunch of words on a page. If there is no regular rhthm there needs to be some sort of discipline (such as rhyming) to make it into a poem or else it is simple a page of words that are equally valid as an essay or note.

Poetry is really a discipline of expressing thought whether through regualr meter or rhyme. To use both is definitely the greatest discipline and often times I spend ages getting this juxtiposition just right in the stuff that I do write.

There is also the interested debate about half rhymes. These jerk at the smoothness of flow in a regular system and can be very emmotive and thought provoking if used sparingly.

The everpresent,
Effervescent,
Shimmering of life.

The bubbling ripples,
The swirling trickles,
The ebbing of the wind.

Smiling and touching,
Carefully flowing,
Its power exceeds all.

The everpresent,
Effervescent,
Shimmering of life.

I've always favored the definition of poetry as "the other way of using language". I think we're all used to rhyme as a standard element, but the rhythm is a big part, sort of like instrumental music (which doesn't really have an equivalent of rhyme?).

P. S. Another definition of poetry: "What gets lost in the translation". How could "Jabberwocky" be translated? Although it probably has ...

Music can have the equivalent of rhyme. If you say the pitches of the notes are the words and the length the rhythm. The harmony between different notes can be interpreted as a sort of rhyme.

As well as that music canlend an argument to half rhymes. If two notes in music don't sound perfect perhaps even dischordant then if used correctly they can create certain textures, just like half rhymes.

"The harmony between different notes can be interpreted as a sort of rhyme."

An interesting idea - can you give an example? It brings to my mind a blues progression - 12 measures typically:

C-F-C-C7-F-F-C-C-G7-F-C-G7 (repeat).

So the recurring harmonies in a fixed pattern could be called rhyme? Or something?