a little follow-up from yesterday's writing that i've been fiddling with in my head.

it's just recently occurred to me that rhyming in abstract poetry is like a whole 'nother level. i think before yesterday, i've always thought that rhyming in the way i write can't be throughout the entire piece. maybe just in a couple of lines here and there. and of course, like a silly little girl, i stuck to those mundane rules of rhyming. cluelessly.

what people (and i) don't always realize is that for every different situation, the rules change a little more, mold a little better to fit in. like locks and keys, but more intimate. rhyming isn't really any different. it's one thing to write a sonnet, or stick to our society's views on poetry (aka "poems rhyme!"), but it's another to play with the more abstract, and often the harsher side of the poetic community. it's not the rhyming poems that catch the critics' eyes, it's the ones that don't. the ones that have something new to offer the world, because we've already had centuries of sonnets trailing in the wake of our history. and that's why abstract poetry is so difficult to pull off. right when i think i've accomplished decently in this category, i had a sudden epiphany about the use of rhyme in abstract poetry. of course i couldn't follow the usual rules of ending the phrase with the same word-sound every other line, or any of those abab abdc aabb abba models. the situation is different, because how can you give something abstract a tangible rule? that would destroy the magic of it all. so doesn't that mean rhyming needs to be subtle and abstract as well? then i thought, well no. because the word rhyme is obviously clearly defined as "correspondence in terminal sounds of units of composition or utterance", as per merrian-webster. how much can i possibly bend the rules there?

then i thought about what made a poem modern in this day and age. line breaks where you least expect them, cynicism between the letters even in the wake of a joyous tone, stanzas that have no obvious connection and yet are so intimately joined that the overall image makes up for the disrupted flow. abstract structure is everything. wording is more. but most importantly, format at the root of all things poetic. so how can i use such a tangible idea of rhyme in poetry that lacks tangible structure? no fucking idea.

there's too much fog on
the windows to see out, much too perfect to
even touch,
it's just our stuck-up curiosity lingering in
shadowed corners leftover from
yesterday's latest break.up--

abstract poetry is meant to be read with serious consideration of the line breaks. for example, if read correctly, "touch" clicks/rhymes with "up". obscure enough? nothing close to the iambic pentameter, unmatched number of syllables, not the exact same word sound...

the second line of this stanza is meant to be read in a rush; subtle repetition to induce panic. "stuck-up curiosity" starts the adrenaline from anger and fuel the next two lines until "break.up". the stanza ends on a down tone (you wouldn't say break UP, you'd say break up, right?). so? new rules for new styles? i'm not sure if i pulled that one off.

a clarification that i really did not consider all this while i was writing that piece. it was emotionally-driven as usual, but this time i paused in the middle and went back to see, and realized that as i was creating line breaks where i saw fit, i also pulled a weird kind of rhyme. and i analyzed my own writing, hahaha. not the first time i've done it, but i'll tell you i pretty much never analyze my own writing in the middle of writing it.

then i noticed that i did it in a few other places too. stuck in the middle of a piece and starting to be conscious of such a deed makes things that much harder to finish. but i finished anyway. semi-conscious of the weird new rhyming thing that i was doing.

went back, thought about it more, and came to a general conclusion. line breaks are meant to be played with in this type of poetry, but no longer as carelessly as they might have been used in a piece that has no intention of rhyme whatsoever. this time, maybe those breaks need to be harsher, more clean-cut, more breath-stopping than before, to ease the way into a rhyme. and maybe those rhyming words need to be more subtle and less similar, but still enough to pull it off. yeah, not exactly the case in the latest thing i wrote, but i'll be working on it!

it's hard to describe, but think of it like if your life was changing completely. if you've moved to a new place, started life over, met new people to complete the package... it's exciting, but it'd also be nice to have something familiar. the way i see it, it's the same idea, but kind of opposite. here's a rhyming that's completely new and subtle and somewhat breathtaking if done the right way, but it can be too overpowering that the magic of the abstract is gone. you'd have to smooth it out with harder line breaks and other formatting techniques so precise and clean-cut that it mellows out the rhyme and brings an underlying flow to something that on the surface appears so abstract and structureless. i don't know if anyone just understood this paragraph, but it's certainly the way i see it.

so now i have something new to work on, because god knows i didn't do that good a job the first time around.

on a side note, i really think i want to double major in english now. really really really. i miss writing analytically. and writing overall. *sighs*