: 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.

@Kevin153

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Older poems were typically written in strict formats with set expectations for meter and rhyme. If you are writing in one of those forms, then departing from its expectations counts as a "mistake" by those standards.

Conversely, modern poetry is most often written in free verse, which more closely resembles ordinary speech, and where rhymes and regular rhythms are rare. If you are writing free verse, then conspicuous rhymes and rhythms might be considered a defect by those standards.

With all that said, a hybrid form, with constantly evolving rhymes and rhythms, is not unprecedented. One of my favorite poems, "my father moved through dooms of love" (e.e. cummings), shifts between unrhymed, rhymed and slant rhymed lines, and varies its generally regular meter for emphasis and to add tension. It is a challenge to do well, and may not suit the tastes of either strict form or free verse purists, but all good art takes risks. Your task then becomes to make sure the shifts actually serve the poem, and don't just come across as laziness, carelessness or lack of skill. There's nothing wrong with making the reader work, but the more work, the bigger had better be the payoff.

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