Imposing a structural template on raw emotional poetry, regardless of whether it's rhythmic, filters out some of the emotions. Rhyme is often used satirically in professional circles. The musicality it imposes on words, is - in certain contexts - a little absurd. Think about spoken rhyme, rather than rhyme as a poetic device. Consider this hypothetical situation:
You are confessing your deepest darkest secrets, to a priest. Everything you say, inexplicably, rhymes. You don't plan it that way. It just happens. This is what you say: "I've spent my life, idly smoking crack. Beat my wife, until I broke her back. But, oh, my God, now I see the light. Put down the rod. I don't want to fight. Go on, God, cut a nigger some slack." The priest thinks you're making fun of him. Like, it's a prank. Regardless of how heart-felt and authentic your confession is, it sounds like a joke. The musicality interferes with what you are trying to express. Far better to just say, "I am a drug addict. I put my wife in the hospital. Now, I see the error of my ways. Have mercy on me, God."
Here's another hypothetical situation:
You're toilet training a small child. Rather than saying, "Shit on the fucking toilet, you little cunt." Or, "Toilets are the appropriate venue for defecation." It's better to say something like, "When we need to do a poo, we don't do it in a shoe! We sit on our big white seat and dangle our little feet. That is how we poo-poo-poo!"
Those are the two ends of the spectrum.
My point is: rhyming suits some situations more than others. It can be determined whether or not rhyming is a suitable approach, by contextualizing what you're trying to express in a real-world situation. Hence the seemingly-patronizing hypothetical situations.
Assuming you're not writing lyrics, writing for children, mocking yourself, mocking your subject matter, or attempting some other form of satire... then you probably “shouldn't” be rhyming.
Rhyming compromises the sincerity of poems.
Poetic structural devices, more often than not, replace truth with the illusion of truth. Consequently, the vast majority of poems, especially those produced by amateurs, are aesthetically orientated.
Words are not flowers, and poems are not floral arrangements. Language is not an aesthetic medium. In fact, it is the only artistic medium that is not aesthetic.
The truth is more beautiful than the illusion of truth. The truth will always outshine any attempt you make to translate it into words. It is impossible to write a perfect poem, or a perfect novel, or a perfect story. To strive for perfection is to chase infinity. Human beings, being fractions of an infinite cosmos, can only ever approach infinity. This is life. It is why species evolve; why we compete; why we are so desperate to survive. It is the nature of the universe, to chase the infinite.
To live is to pursue the unobtainable.
It is impossible to write the perfect poem.
The truth is perfect. Language is imperfect. Our consciousness is imperfect, too. As a species, survivalism limits our ability to make objective observations. And as individuals, our personalities limit us. Then there's taboos and other limitations imposed upon us by society.
Before it gets to us, the truth is filtered: through our survival instinct, our hormones, and our limited sensory abilities; through law, etiquette, and taboo; through optimism, pessimism, fundamentalism, and all the other “isms”; through repression; through arbitrary preferential dispositions, ie. our “likes” and “dislikes”. I can't name them all, nor am I aware of them all. There are billions of filters.
History is “wrong”. Everything that everyone has ever written down. Every thought. Every discovery. People who believe Hamlet is a perfect play, don't understand infinity. It's not perfect. Nor is science. I find it funny the sheer number of people I encounter who have absolute faith in science. These scientific fundamentalists mock religious fundamentalists, unaware of the hypocrisy. Everything is wrong. Science. Religion. Art. There is no “right”, only varying degrees of wrong.
We are, forever, chasing infinity. All you can hope to do, is get as close to it as possible.
What we percieve as truth, having gone through all the “input” filters – the social, biological, and individual – is then filtered by “output” filters, as we attempt to express it.
There are twenty-six letters in the English language, and maybe a quarter million words. It is a finite system. It cannot accommodate the infinite. Language is a multi-directional filter. It filters what comes in, and what goes out.
If you accept all this – which you may or may not, depending on your individual filters – I urge you to seriously consider the point of my seemingly-tangental ramblings. My point, is this:
Why place unnecessary limitations on something that is already severely limited?
Why are you concerned with the structure filter?
Why apply the rhyme filter?
my attempts at fictional short stories just seem to fail after a paragraph or two. Perhaps more planning is needed.
No.
Less planning is needed. If you are unable to complete a first draft, you're thinking too much. First drafts should be written from the heart. Interfere as little as possible with your soul. Intellectualism is over-rated. You don't need to be clever. Nor do you need to write something that fits in with any socially or individually predetermined definition of “right” and “wrong”.
People call some poems pretentious. Really, all poems are pretentious. Because everything is pretense. On an infinite scale, you can either approach infinity or approach nothing. Infinity has no beginning or end. There is no zero. Man is capable of being infinitely worse than Hitler, just as poets are capable of being infnitely better than Shakespeare.
An uneducated man might think he isn't smart enough to comprehend the supposedly-profound implications of an academic text. An educated man, on the other hand, might recognize that there are no profound implications and that the text is highly pretentious.
Typically, work that is dubbed “pretentious” is highly academic. Lots of intertextual references, structural devices, and five syllable words. This isn't a co-incidence. Academia is highly pretentious. Academics are idiots, who make money by pretending to be intelligent. Throughout history, great men have recognized the extraordinary power of simple truths. The common man knows more than the man with the doctorate.
Education is paradoxical. The more you learn, the less you know. Although I go to university, I oppose everything. I refuse to learn. Because I want to be a writer, not an academic. On the pretentious scale, I strive to approach zero. The truth is important to me. It's difficult, though. I'm never close enough to zero, to be satisfied. Not because I'm lazy. Or incapable. But, because it's impossible. I need zero. That is my goal.
I am chasing infinity.
Nobody should ever be satisfied that anything they produce. If you write two paragraphs, and you hate them, that's a good thing. Hating your poems is better than loving every word you type. Because self-loathing can be a path towards self-criticism. Arrogance is a dead end. It's important to distinguish between pride and arrogance; between loathing, and criticism: be proud of your work, but be critical of it. It's also important to distinguish between satisfaction and
satisfaction. Be satisfied of how far you have come, but never
satisfied that you have reached your destination.
Don't think.
Just write.
Try to write the deepest most personal truth you can: especially if think you will never be able to show it to anyone; or if you think you have to delete it as soon as it's written; throw it away; burn it; delete it and magnetize your hard drive; throw it away, then burn the bin; delete it, magnetize your hard drive, then burn your house down; or, most importantly, if – after writing it – you don't think you'll be able to live with yourself.
You are your own worst enemy.
You cannot be trusted.
That, of course, is just my opinion.
