How can we incorporate poems in a novel?
I am not sure if this is true, but I heard there were short poems in the beginning of each chapter in Lord of the Rings. Although, this could be done fairly easily, I am wondering if there are any other way to incorporate poems in a novel. I am thinking there are many instances of it in the rich history of literature, but because I haven't read a lot of books I am curious to know if there are ways of enriching a novel with poems that I am not aware of.
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You have been misinformed: The Lord of the Rings doesn't have short poems at the start of each chapter. The Lord of the Rings has poems of various length (up to several pages long), when characters sing, recite poems, or find them written somewhere.
Characters may sing on varied occasions: there are walking songs and bathing songs, there are elegies for the dead and lays sung to tell a tale. Verse may be recited, etc. Whenever the narrator says a character sings, or recites poetry, or encounters verse in some other form, the verse is right there. It's as simple as that - the verse is as much a part of the narrative as any bit of dialogue.
Such use of poetry is quite common in literature, if the author can write poetry.
@Rasdashan mentions Dr. Zhivago in a comment. Boris Pasternak uses a different approach: while the main character is a poet, only snippets of verse appear within the narration. Instead, a collection of verse "written by the character" is appended to the book. That approach is more meta, keeping up the pretence that the character is a real person.
And of course there is the separate form of writing a novel entirely in verse. Such were the ancient sagas, such as Beowulf and the Iliad, medieval works such as El Cantar de Mio Cid and The Song of Roland, and more modern novels in verse, such as Alexander Pushkin's Yevgeniy Onegin.
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There are answers before mine; so I will only add that one other use of a poem or rhyming verse (which I did not see in those answers) is as a clue to some mystery. This can represent a riddle directly, or it is a riddle disguised as poem, like a love poem or an elegy on a gravestone.
I cannot recall exactly, but I believe Dan Brown has used this device in his religious mysteries.
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