Lyric Poetry Is, Of Course, Musical In

Among Those Today Who Believe That Modern Poetry Must Do Without Rhyme Or Metre, There Is An Assumption That The Alternative To Free Verse Is A Crash Course In Villanelles, Sestinas And Other Such Fixed Forms. But Most... Are Rare In English Poetry. Few Poets Have Written A Villanelle Worth Reading, Or Indeed Regret Not Having Done So.

The Basic Rhymes In English Are Masculine, Which Is To Say That The Last Syllable Of The Line Is Stressed: "lane" Rhymes With "pain", But It Also Rhymes With "urbane" Since The Last Syllable Of "urbane" Is Stressed. "lane" Does Not Rhyme With "methane".

"love" Is So Short Of Perfect Rhymes That Convention Allows Half-rhymes Like "move". The Alternative Is A Plague Of Doves, Or A Kind Of Poem In Which The Poet Addresses His Adored Both As "love" And As "guv" - A Perfectly Decent Solution Once, But Only Once, In A While.

The Mormon Mission To Africa, As To Other Dark-skinned Parts Of The World, Was For A Long Time Hobbled By The Racism Of The Movement's Scripture.

A Glance At The History Of European Poetry Is Enough To Inform Us That Rhyme Itself Is Not Indispensable. Latin Poetry In The Classical Age Had No Use For It, And The Kind Of Latin Poetry That Does Rhyme - As For Instance The Medieval Carmina Burana - Tends To Be Somewhat Crude Stuff In Comparison With The Classical Verse That Doesn't.