Rhyming poetry or free verse

As a poet who began writing at age 11, I started with rhymed poems because that was easier for me, but now I write free verse...I think free verse is easier to write if you ha the chance to study some poetry styles or even musical lyrics...it helps you become a better writer.

With rhymed poetry, you have to get rhyming words, where as with free verses your thoughts just flow and you basically write what comes to me in poetic form. Give it a try!

Poetry is a very personal thing and how the individul writes it is entirely up to them,there have been many great poets who write with very little structure,and yet it has worked well for them,there has been no pattern,no rhyme as such but the verse has worked,the words have been words that have gelled and made emotions heightened and that is the art of petry to be able to heighten someones emotions by putting feelings down on paper.

I'm mostly old school. I've published a few free verse, but they seem wanting. Our brain wants to rhyme something out of it, our mathmatical intuition wants to count things in it, but free verse is just free verse. It can be melodic and beautiful, but I rather prefer both writing and reading the well-metered, perfectly counted rhyming poem.

I so understand what you are saying and I feel the same way. On a rare occasion I have written a free verse poem, but not contrived or planned but because that is the way it flowed. Most times my poetry follows the metered, rhyming style.

It is only in the latter years that free verse has become more in demand. Look at the works of greats like Edgar Allen Poe. Many of your older poets wrote in the metered, rhyming style and they certainly were not amateurs.

Do not become discouraged and certainly do not hide away your gift. There are those who will still appreciate your style. I love to read poetry that rhymes. Some of the free verse I read is unappealing to me and does not have enough flow. Poetry should flow like a soft breeze. I find that much of the free verse does not flow softly. As you mentioned it seems to be forced a great deal of the time.

There are four standard forms in Poetry. They are the Ballad, the Sonnet, the Triolet, and the Villanelle. All of them have a rhyming pattern and have been used by all poets in all ages. Rhyming doesn't indicate being juvenile or amateurish, if that would be the case, then Shakespeare was amateur?

There is of course Free Verse of which Walt Whitman is famous for, maybe this is because he started it.

I do enjoy both styles. A Ballad can still bring out a smile or an emotion even if it was written in the middle ages. Would Shakespeare be as famous without his plays and his Sonnets?

A lot of poets played around the structures or forms and thereby attained a higher degree of writing with their words. Without that rhyme and rhythm, a lot poems would have been bland. They may have not reached us at all!

Imagine if there was no rondeau, then we wouldn't have "Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream."

This brings me to: Whoever it was who told you that rhyming is amateurish perhaps didn't read anything beyond nursery rhymes.