When we write poetry, we follow a fixed format and a flat rhythm, and what we write is metrical poetry.
Poetry is a big concept, and it is not only a kind of metrical poetry.
Poetry is divided into ancient poetry and modern poetry. Modern poetry is a poetic style based on vernacular Chinese, which takes freedom as the banner and does not need rhyme, let alone the shackles of flat and even metrical patterns. Therefore, writing modern poetry, regardless of the problem of poetic meter, as long as the situation is full and the reading is smooth, that is a matter of different opinions.
Is it necessary to know the rhythm of poetry when writing ancient poems?
Not necessarily. The ancient poetry takes the emergence of the flat and even meter in the Tang Dynasty as the dividing point, and distinguishes the modern poetry that talks about the flat and even meter from the ancient poetry that doesn't, that is, the ancient style. There are many reasons why the ancient style does not talk about leveling. The most important point is that the concept of leveling had not yet come into being. Therefore, although the cadence and patchwork pronunciation rules are naturally observed in phonology, they are spontaneous and irregular and cannot be incorporated into the level tone system.
Therefore, when we are writing ancient poems, it is not a problem if they are straightforward, loosely rhymed, imprecise and of different lengths. This is just ancient poetry.
Only the poems that strictly abide by the rules of "level and level" (level and level, rhyme, antithesis, grammar) are modern poems. Modern poetry includes quatrains, metrical poems and lines. Later, there were epigrams and Sanqu. Although these poems are not metrical, they are all metrical, that is to say, the pronunciation in the sentences is even, and the ancient poems have further changed. If the sentences of ancient poetry are all qualified, but the sentence patterns are long and short, we also call them "metrical ancient".
After the formation and maturity of metrical rules, they consciously or unconsciously guided the creative direction of China's ancient poems in all formats. Including later modern poems, and the "new meter" advocated by Wen Yiduo, which pays attention to the beauty of Chinese characters' phonology and scene. Only in the contemporary era, modern poetry has completely abandoned the metrical style and the new metrical style, and turned into relying only on the rhetoric of vernacular Chinese to express emotions, occasionally rhyming, and paying attention to the accumulation and outbreak of emotions. The aesthetic feeling of Chinese characters is no longer the primary consideration.
Then read the title: Don't write poetry if you don't know the rhythm of poetry?
This view is obviously wrong. Poetry expresses ambition, poetry expresses ambition. When you have some feelings to express, you can write poems. Knowing the rhythm of poetry will make your poetry more artistic, fluent and catchy, but it doesn't matter if you don't understand it. When reciting, you will unconsciously obey the rules of phonology. Because a word is not easy to read, what is poetry? Even if it is written, people will read it and throw it into the garbage.
As long as we don't label the specifications of modern poetry we write as "seven laws" and "seven laws", no one will care whether it conforms to the flat and even metrical rules. Because meter itself is a rule that modern poetry needs to abide by. We can write modern poems and ancient styles to impress readers without affecting emotional expression and poetic charm.
Antique works, how many classics.
But don't write modern poetry if you don't know the rhythm of poetry.