Do poems have to have rhythm or rhyme?

2 Answers
Mar 23, 2018

Songs have rhythm and poems have rhyme.

Explanation:

Even though a song is a type of a poem, the song has to have a rhythm to it for it to be able actually be pronounced as a song. A poem needs some rhyming to it, but it doesn't need a lot of rhyming to it and does not need rhythm to it.

Mar 23, 2018

No.

Explanation:

Free verse poetry does not have rhyme or rhythm (but it's still art!).

Example (Fog by Carl Sandburg):

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.