I'm really not sure ?

[Leonidas]

Hello to all, I'm really not sure about this as only some of my family have ever read anything I've written in the past !
I also don't know the differentance between poetry and rhymes ?
I'm also not very good at spelling.
The reason I chose Leonidas is because I had a pretty rough youth and I relate to the Spartan way of life, although more towards family than country.

Leonidas

[Yog]

Rhyme is a repetition of similar consonants and vowel sounds. Rhyme and time rhyme but aren't in themselves, a poem. Technically speaking a rhyme is a complete repition of sound after the first stressed vowel in a word. (Don't sweat the technical stuff though. If it sounds like a rhyme it probably is a rhyme, and if it isn't then almost no one really cares anyway.)

That being said rhyme can be used in poetry in many ways. If two lines of a poem end in words that rhyme it's called an end rhyme. For instance:

Ole Johnny boy was late for class
For this, the teacher thought him crass

Because class and crass rhyme and both occur at the end of the line it's an end rhyme. If the two rhyming words occur inside the same line it's called an internal rhyme. "From afar fell the star," would be an example of an internal rhyme.

There are many other types of rhyme: cross rhyme, slant rhyme, sight rhyme. In all honesty though, don't sweat the technical stuff unless you are just trying to understand feedback.

As for poetry, that isn't so easy a thing to define. There are as many styles of poetry as there are people who write it. Poetry is much like rhyme, if it looks like a poem, smells like a poem, feels like a poem, and sounds like a poem, then it probably is a poem.

That said, welcome to the forum.

[Leonidas]

Thanks Yog, I think that helps me. Most of my writing is a kind of rhyme then.

Leonidas

[smorzando]

Hi, welcome to the forum. I'd attempt to explain rhyming to you, but Yog has already explained it, and done so about a million times better than I would have done. =)

All that said, I hope to see you around and look forward to reading some of your work.

smorz.