'The Bachelor,' Shakespeare and Homer: Why poems must rhyme

Start with an embarrassing premise: Mrs. Brad and I were watching "The Bachelor" recently (OK, get your laughs out of the way. Ha ha ha) and the  guy who all the women were pursuing wrote a poem to a woman named Kaity and then read it.

I don't remember what it said, but I remembered what it didn't do: Rhyme.

It was a poem without rhymes, which I immediately told Mrs. Brad was wrong. I even freestyled for her a poem he could have written: "Hello Kaity. We're on a date-y. I won't keep you out late-y  to determine whether you will be my matey. I promise not to do anything shady."

It was freestyle! It was great! It rhymed!

Mrs. Brad, who has a degree in English, shot back with the same ridiculous answer I've heard my entire life: Poems don't have to rhyme.

Which is patently ridiculous.

Poems don't have to rhyme? Then what makes something a poem? Is this sentence a poem? Is the Declaration of Independence a poem? Is a note from a parent to a teacher a poem?

To augment my argument, I did what I've been doing since I was in elementary school and needed to lengthen an assignment: I looked it up in Webster's Dictionary.

According to Webster's (which is how you always phrase these things), a poem is "a metrical writing," (a definition I ignored because we don't use the metric system) or the production of a poet.

What? I bet the definition of "poet" is "one who writes poems." It's a circular argument.

There was a second definition: "writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm." Yeah, whatever. Here's what I think that means: Something that rhymes.

All the English teachers reading this are pulling out their hair, screaming into the void that poems don't need to rhyme. On that, I'll give them partial credit because, for instance, we all learned that haikus needn't rhyme.

But here's a memorable haiku:

What is a poem?

Is it words that just go on?

No. There must be rhymes.

Isn't that proof enough? Isn't it clear that when a haiku – the only exception to Stanhope's Poems Must Rhyme Rule – says that poems must rhyme? That's as good as Webster's Dictionary.

So we can agree, right? It's fine to write flowery prose. It's fine to write beautiful odes to nature or love or the hit-and-run play or finding a parking spot at the Post Office. But those are not poems. Those are nice, pretty things to write.

Poems have to rhyme. They had to rhyme when Homer wrote "The Odyssey" (first line: This is the story of Achilles/Who could have played outfield for the Phillies / He went out the door / And went off to war / And got an injury that gives me the willies."). Poems also rhymed when Shakespeare was writing them (highlight from "Hamlet": "To be or not to be, that is the question; when you eat hot dogs you get indigestion.")

Finally, poems absolutely should rhyme when they're on "The Bachelor," which is the modern equivalent of Homer and Shakespeare's productions. By the way, Kaity "won," if that's how you define winning on that show.

Brad Stanhope is a poet. Reach him at bradstanhope@outlook.com.