Saith the man,
Most humbly.

To be completely honest, most poetry that rhymes bores me. e.e. cummings is the most enjoyable read IMO. Rhyming poems remind me of elementary school music class: clapping, swaying and stomping one's feet. I like a poem that makes one think, that moves one's soul, that makes one chuckle...

Canterbury Tales is wonderful! In high school we were required to memorize the first lines of it. I'll never forget:

1: Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
2: The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
3: And bathed every veyne in swich licour
4: Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
5: Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
6: Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
7: Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
8: Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
9: And smale foweles maken melodye,
10: That slepen al the nyght with open ye
11: (so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
12: Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
13: And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
14: To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
15: And specially from every shires ende
16: Of engelond to caunterbury they wende,
17: The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
18: That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

e.e.cummings is good for moving the soul and making one think. His poetry is evocative of tenderness, sometimes hilarious.

who knows if the moon's
a balloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky-filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should

get into it,if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody's ever visited,where

always
........it's
................Spring)and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves

[quote=chris[ti(a)n](e)]Saith the man

"To be completely honest, most poetry that rhymes bores me. "

Sorry that you don't like "my kind of "poetry" (?) which rhymes.
What I see of e.e. cummings turns me off. Give me Ogden Nash any day.

Ogden Nash? Give me don/aldridge any day, the meter's better.

Tis my humble opinion
that anyone with this diminion
who can cleverely compose
a polyphonic prose
is a much better versifier
among english authors and writers.
They don't have to be famous
to perform the writ of mandamus.
Just a bit of research, you see...
and a knak for clever-ity,
Is all that I require
in a poet that I would admire.

Prose poems fascinate me, Neil. This is by one of my favorite poets:

Watermelons

Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.

by Charles Simic

Here is a prose poem I wrote about 1965. Believe it or not it was published in a monthly sheet at the University at Austin, Texas and they paid me one dollar. :-| That was the end of my career as a poet. :-)

CREDO

as necessary
or un-
the soaring bird
silent
tall trees naked or
clothed
streams that are traveling
traveling
or any large rock
which
waits
in the
desert

LOL, your career as a poet sounds like my career as an author! One published work, a couple of acclaimed works--but not much more!

I love it, by the way--your poem!

Thanks, Cris. I did manage to get rejection slips from The New Yorker and from Harper's Magazine. Should have kept them and framed them. Oh, well, guess I could always get more. :-)

Observations on a Sabbath School Class
(dedicated to those whispering in the back row)

Listen you biddies
Bestow the yak yak
Lest deacons invite you
To go farther back.

The rumble's disturbing
The rest of the class
As glances go backward
Hoping 'twill pass.

You notice I'm quiet
My hands in my lap
No noise am I making
As I take my nap.....