re / CHRONICLESn”unconscious,” such poetic testimony certainly would notngenerate the excitement that Milosz’s poetry offers. And thisnis yet another proof that a poet has to deal with crucialnmoments in history, with what determines the “pulse” of ancertain age. The value of his testimony and the value of thenpoetic work itself depend on that.nTherefore it seems necessary to think twice about Aristotle’snadvice. The consequence should not be, of course, ancatalog of prescribed themes in which the building of anWhite Sea canal or the flight to the moon would benrecommended as the Alexandrian feats of our age.nThe poet is only partly a member of society; his speech isnpersonal, and no one can prompt him as to what he shouldnspeak about. But his monologue is meant for others as wellnand, lacking response, becomes absurd. The reader mustnrespond if art is to have any meaning at all. What today’snreader should be told, I do not know; but it is certain thatnpioetry should say much more than, it does. Otherwise, thenreader will become completely deaf to it.n; You might not be aware of how the “Bop” was born.nWhen a policeman hit a black on the head, his nightsticknsang, “Be! Bop! Be-bop! Bop!” At least this is the explanationnoffered by Langston Hughes. Let it be, then, my ownnmessage to lovers and writers of verse: The stroke of this agenupon our heads has to find its onomatopoeia in contemporarynpoetry.nTHE NEW FREEDOM OF RHYME by Peter DalenIn the days of Latinate learning, there was an animusnagainst rhyme which must have been a considerablennuisance in that heavily inflected language. In his Observationsnon the Art of English Poesie of 1602, the English poetnand composer Campion remarked:nThe facility and popularity of Rime creates as manynpoets as a hot summer, flies.nPeter Dale has written seven volumes of poetry includingnThe Storms, Mortal Fire, and Too Much of Water.nnnMilton agri^ with him in disliking the jingle of likenendings, though both men were consummate rhymersnthemselves.nIn the days of our polyglot fragmentation of learning, thendays of free verse and free love, there is among poets ansimilar impatience with the artifice of rhyme—and verynlittle impatience with the artifice of eccentric typography.nAs a consequence, most pupils, students, and the casualngeneral reader would say—some even complain—thatnmodern poetry does not rhyme. For the facility and popularitynof free verse creates as many “poets” as a hot summer,nflies. In fact, these readers are mistaken, though not tonblame, for while this has been one of the great periods ofnrhyme, it has been rhyme with a difference. Our period hasnbeen one of wide-ranging experiment with all sorts ofnextension to rhyme systems and technique.nIt could be argued maliciously that while the modernsnhave only popularized one new form, free verse (whichncannot be the one and only acceptable form for all areas ofnpoetic communication), the rhymers have invented sonmany new systems of rhyme that all forms of verse havenbeen virtually renewed and refreshed. It is no longernpossible to complain that rhyme is a difficult straitjacket innEnglish now that the poet has so extensive a choice ofnrhyme systems.nTraditional pure rhyme in English is based on a tripartitensystem: difference of initial sound, similarity of vowel,nsimilarity of termination: hill/still. This is not true ofnmonosyllabic rhymes that open or close with a vowel—butnthese will not materially alter our understanding. There is,ntherefore, a proportion of one of difference to two ofnsimilarity. (Emily Dickinson seems the first in America tonchange rhyme systems and alter this proportion, but shendoes not systemize her variations.) It is with this proportionnthat the earliest experimenters played.nIn France, Jules Laforgue seems to have been the first tonexperiment with new methods. The mute e which isnpronounced in French poetry suggested a type of pararhymento him which is more familiar to us through the work ofnWilfred Owen. Laforgue changed the last vowel pron