Does a poem have to rhyme?

Does a poem have to rhyme?

With the question 'do poems have to rhyme?', the best way to think about it, is if you read the first translations of the Bible. They took a Hebrew poem, often called The Song of Solomon, and translated it into what we would now call free-verse. The same goes for the Psalms. So, people knew in the 17th century that you could have many types of poetry that didn't have to rhyme. Now, it took a long time for people to have the nerve to start writing new poems in a way that didn't rhyme. I think the first person who did it was probably the German poet Henry Heiner who wrote some poems about looking at the North Sea, and he discovered that you could just write a contemplation of the North Sea and not make it rhyme. And ever since then, people have thought it was a very good idea.