ABSTRACT

If many children believe a poem has to rhyme, that is mainly because rhyme is an integral part of their early exposure to verse: nursery-rhymes and folk-rhymes rhyme.

Children, then, sometimes need convincing that poems don’t have to rhyme.First read with the class some short poems that don’t rhyme, partly as a sly act of persuasion, but essentially for pleasure. In D.H. Lawrence, Arthur Waley and Carl Sandburg are lovely short rhymeless poems. Sandburg’s ‘Fog’,‘Soup’,‘Summer Grass’ and ‘Splinter’ are wonderfully worth searching out.