: Re: Is using too many different metres and rhyming schemes bad? I have been working on a poem for some time now. It is divided into various "Parts" and it will be a long one when completed.
Poetry is like music
There is a tension in a song, between fulfilling an expectation and subverting or consciously breaking it. However, there has to be enough that's recognizable as a "background" against which your expectation-breaking is happening. In poetry, the rhythm and rhyme patterns are not the focus, but the background that remains reliable.
Sour notes are worse than noise
It is more painful to hear one slightly false note in a lovely tune than to hear a wooden spoon being smacked repeatedly against a pot. Why? You were expecting more from the lovely tune than from the banging.
When a poem shifts in rhythm or tone, especially in a way that brings the reader up short, this can be an absolute triumph! (If and only if the theme perfectly aligns with the jarring change.) In prose, you generally pay little attention to rhythm, assonance, rhyme, etc. In fact, it sounds strange when any sort of pattern arises for any discernable length of time, and when I wrote more prose than poetry, I actively rooted out accidental rhymes and repetitions and alliterations which gave a weird focus where focus did not belong.
It's entirely possible to write a spectacular poem which changes styles repeatedly - but it has to MEAN something. If your poetry builds an expectation and then simply abandons it, then the results will be a ruin of dissonance - worse than noise. On the other hand, if there is a clear meaning to your shift, and the payoff justifies the shock...
That might work.
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