Writing poetry with perfect rhyme scheme without spoiling its beauty is a very great task. It may not be that comfortable for modern writers who find it an obstacle for the free flow of thought that might be expressed through free verse. it all depends on the current changes in thought and expression

Free verse is an "American" invention, an expression of the valuation of individual "freedom." In America it is alleged that all voices have equal value, even if incoherent. Rhyme is seen as passe, a mode of expression reflecting neo-colonial and "classic" values and the traditional sense of order now passe. Anti-rhyme is also based on a distinction between "verse," which is often sentimental, and "poetry," which is supposed to be "deep." The aesthetics of rhyme do not do justice to the "noise" of modern life, also its diversities, its many voices. Hence "free verse" is seen as more "realistic," a more valid expression of how people in destabilized societies live and feel and think. It is worth wondering if the passing of rhyme--or at least the debunking of meaningful sinuous combinations of rhythm, sound, and metaphor--normalizes an aesthetic sense that destabilizes societies.

Rhyme remains important in American music, especially rap music but also much avant garde music. But also remember that The Iliad and much important epic poetry do not deploy rhyme always.

Wiki: Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States, and of American literature.

Poe was a romantic in many ways; TS Eliot was a modern. There is a very big difference in poetic structure: please refer to my "The Universal Deep Structure of Modern Poetry", Cambridge Scholars publications, 2022. ( J A F Hopkins)

I think it is important today to ask what we mean by the word "poetry"? Given how many writers who, these days, write what they call "sonnets" without using iambic pentameter lines or stanzas or rhymes, when does a "sonnet" stop being a sonnet and the term ceases to function as a verbal sign? Similarly, when does poetry stop being poetry? When is it prose, or rather incoherent fragments scattered on a page? Is a lot of rhymed "poetry" not poetic because it lacks certain qualities we associate with the term? If this is so, what are these qualities? So the problem remains: What is poetry? When do words fail to live up to the term? Are there certain formal requirements? Are the defining characteristics of the term satisfied by those who insist on calling their words poetry? If "originality" is part of the definition, how do we distinguish "originality" from outbursts that are mainly "weird" and possibly meaningless?

Emilio DeGrazia Thank you for your response it was illuminating. Concerning your first answer, the last proposition therein is interesting, as one is prompted to wonder if the free verse is echoing of the call for a realm with no order, or point of reference, in the Derridean sense. Besides the American point of view, however, which invented the free verse on the ground that all voices are equal, the free verse is now adopted well-nigh in all cultures; hence, it is now more of a universal than an American problematic—can one, then, consider the poets who don’t rhyme their verses as being of an inferior mastery of the language compared to those who always rhymed their poetry without affecting the sense and the beauty of the poem?

Emilio DeGrazia For your second answer, don’t you think that Roman Jakobson's reinterpretation of Metaphor and Metonymy would be of great benefit in attempting to define what poetry is? Metaphor for poetry, as metaphor conventionally is conceived of as a function to condense, which is the case in poetry; nevertheless, in Lacanian terms, metaphor functions to suppress, which is the case in poetry as well. Metonymy, on the other hand, is for prose, as it functions to combine words, rather than suppress and substitute them. Even historically, poetry was primary over prose, and Jakobson did evaluate metaphor as prior to metonymy in speech or any form of discursiveness—though personally, I believe more in the Lacanian order as metonymy being prior to condensation in the sense of the signifier being prior to the signified.

So would the inclusion of metaphor, and metaphor only, be the criteria to judge whether a written work is poetic or not?

I am concerned that the term "poetry" is being used to refer to any individual's mode of expression, especially if brief enough to stand on one page. This would accord with the anarchism implied by free verse, which is the U.S. is often an expression of "individualism," a term often exploited by those on the left who believe in "self-expression" and on the right by "libertarians," who support and fund extremist capitalism. I have my own notions of what elements define poetry, but these notions are lost in the crowd of poetic beliefs. In essence, I agree that metaphor is basic to poetry, in that the secrets of language's relationship to the real facts of life lurk in metaphors. Poetry includes dense sinews of metaphor, or (well organized) clusters. But poetry also has had a long connection to the elements of music--rhythms, repetitions of sound, including rhymes. Feelings. Sounds. So poetry, for me, is defined by the concentration of metaphor, rhythm, and word sounds, which in themselves, rather than (or in) "stanzas," can create the structures we also require of poetry. Poetry therefore need not be traditional rhymed verse, and often the sentimentalism of "poetic verse" is merely melodramatic and unrealistic. Thus poetry may also be "free" in limited ways--by the structuring of the elements of traditional verse in non-traditional ways. Most troubling to me are the examples of anarchic language that some call "poetry," mainly because they disqualify poetry as a socially valuable mode of expression. Few institutions support poetry as a valuable mode of expression, and those that do are actively--politically--being weakened. As serious troubles spread in the world, poetry as a means of inspiring collective responses is therefore marginalized. Individualism, and its anarchic expressions, are what remain, rather solitary and temporary.