Sometimes we are asked why Mused has only a few rhymed poems in each issue. The answer is that few people submit rhymed poems, and that they are much harder to write well compared with an unrhymed poem. A poet who writes an unrhymed poem only has to worry about their words and visions and story. They can use whatever words they want. A poet who writes a rhymed poem has an exponentially more difficult challenge ahead of them. Now not only do they have to use words that bring the poem to life, but those words also have to fit tightly into a certain rhyme scheme and a syllable count as well. Only a few poets are able to pull this extra level of challenge off.

There are many choices out there for how to structure your rhyming poem. For example, you could use a sonnet style, like when William Shakespeare wrote this sonnet which has the alternating lines rhyme:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Read the poem out loud. You can see how every other syllable has emphasis on it.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day

This kind of rhythm is important in a rhyming poem, and it can be really challenging to find words that create that rhythm naturally, and that still have meaningful words in them. If you write a typical poem in one day, it can take a month before you get the rhyming version to work out properly!

You can go even more complicated, as Edgar Allen Poe did in his famous poem "The Raven":

Once upon a midnight dreary,
while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious
volume of forgotten lore,

While I nodded, nearly napping,
suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping,
rapping at my chamber door.

In this poem, the first and second line of each stanza rhyme with each other, and then the last line of each stanza rhymes. Once again, when you read it you feel the up-down rhythm of the words:

Once upon a midnight dreary

It is very important in a rhymed poem that you read your work aloud and you feel that rhythm, and that the rhymes work properly. A key to this is that the poem feel *smooth*. It should not feel forced - it should not feel like you stuck a really inane word into the poem just to make the rhyme work. Yes, it takes a lot of effort to find the proper words that all fit the poem well! That is why rhymed poems are so rare in this world - and so precious.

Word Choice in Rhyming Poems
Once you start to get the rhyme down smoothly, you run into the problem of word choice. When a poet is struggling with a rhyming poem and trying to get it to work out, they begin to stick "random words" into various spots to get the syllables to fall into the right spots. The words clearly do not belong there, and they stick out like sore thumbs. So you end up with something like this:

It just is wrong this way things are
To just hang out beside the house
I wish I had a real fast car
To drive away with my friend mouse!

It's fairly clear that using the word "just" over and over again was done as a "cheat" - a way to get the poem to work. So was the word "real" before "fast car". It was something stuck into the poem to try to fix a problem. However, instead of this being a finished, polished granite sculpture of a horse, it's more like seeing a lovely sculpture that has a giant pink band-aid stuck on its nose. It jars the reader from the experience of the poem.

Try to avoid all of those "filler" words like just, most, very. Avoid tossing in "ands" and "ors" to fill in the spots. Don't resort to cheats like cutting off pieces of words, using 'gainst instead of against, using 'twas instead of "it was", just to get the meter to fit. Gently deconstruct what you've done, and reconstruct it to be more waterproof, to have a correct layering of words and images that fit naturally.

You want every word in your poem to feel as if it's important, and that it conveys a rich vision of the world you're presenting. Imagine you read a poem that said a girl was "dressed in pink" - is that a snuggly flannel nightgown? Is it a lacy party dress? Is it a ballerina outfit with pink tights and a white tshirt? We want to see your vision! Don't settle for the cliche, simple words like "walked" and "said" and "saw". Did she stride angrily? Did she stroll contentedly? Did she twirl with delight? Let us know what your vision is!

Good luck!

Here are some examples of wonderfully done rhyming poems that we have run in past issues of Mused:

Ellipsis by Kathleen Brand
Arousa by Richard Dowling
Autumn by Elizabeth A. Kray
Open Lies by Armond Richards

Poetry Basics
Poetry Submission Basics
Poetry Cliches to Avoid
Creating Immersive Poetry

Poetry Submission Form

General Mused Submission FAQs
Main Submission Guidelines

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By far the best way to get an idea of what our literary review is looking for is to peruse our past issues!

Archive of Past Issues