Rhyme is Difficult.
What is rhyme? Rhyme is when you have two words with identical endings and sound alike. Rhyme is what gives poetry a lot of its music. It signals the end of a line in most circumstances. It is used to tie two words together to make them, in some way, reflect on the other... either to add greater depth or contrast. It is a communion between words. Rhyme is also a mnemonic device. It is a memory aid. Before poetry was written down, we used rhyme to help people remember... it drives the idea home and makes it stick. You know that one word is ‘rose’? the next end must be ‘pose’ because it rhymes.
If that is the case, why do so many people hate rhyme and why does it so often hurt our modern ear? The two go hand in hand. Early modern poets, where most of us get a lot of our experience, threw out end rhyme because it was a part of the “establishment” “the Man keeping them down”, or what have you.
Also, some rhymes are so obvious that they have become cliché. Watch a cartoon. We’ve all seen that comic figure of the poet trying to write his love poem with June, spoon, moon, or to feel the breeze from the trees on his knees in the leaves. These images are funny because they are so over used. We hear them and it makes us laugh. So how can we, as poets, use rhyme effectively? One way is to use new rhymes. Don’t rhyme trees with breeze. Maybe bees is better. It’s surprising. The reader won’t expect it. The surprise makes it more bearable.
Or, instead of heavy end rhyme, there is a poetic technique called enjambment (see lesson 1) in which a phrase of poetry is broken between two lines. By not ending the line on the rhyme, we soften it, moving through it while still registering it and taking pleasure in the music of the line.
There are different ways to rhyme. What we call Masculine rhyme means the rhyme happens on a stressed syllable, for example:
"And yet, by Heav'n I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare."
A feminine rhyme is on an un-stressed syllable, for example:
"A raven sits high on the gibbet
A part of the deadly exhibit."
Both of these are true rhymes.
There are also sight rhymes, words that end the same but do not Rhyme. Such as Pain and Again. Spoken they do not rhyme, but on a page they look like a rhyme and hold together. Sight Rhyme, therefore, is fairly recent, as it could only come into existance with the written word.
Finally there is slant rhyme, or off rhyme. This happens when the words end with the same consonant sound but a different vowel. An example is:
"A witch was hanging about
Causing the village a fright."
If the words have the same vowel sound and a different consonant, this is called assonance and will be discussed later.
Also, if rhyme creates bonds between words, we as poets should try to make new connections between words. Finding unusual rhymes is one way we can bring our language together and give it life... which is the job of every poet.
Last edited on Sat Jan 23rd, 2010 05:11 am by Cappuchino
____________________ "We say what we can when we want to speak about the Ineffable One about whom nothing can be said in the proper sense. We must either keep silence or use words in a transformed way."
Isaac of Stella
Absolutely, David. I have always been a rhyming poet, and for many years I considered free verse poetry as a lazy way for those who either couldn't or couldn't be bothered rhyming. (naturally, I now know a lot better).
Whilst being a fan of simple rhyme, I often try and write very complicated schemes, some so hidden that I'm the only one who notices the trouble I went to. That doesn't mean it wasn't worth the trouble. The other thing we often lose sight of is out main audience is ourself. Write how YOU want to, now what society dictates.
Jay is another who puts a lot of thought and work into some of his rhymes.
I'm severely enjoying your lessons, it's great, and thank you, David. Many others are but don't say so (dunno why)
Thanks Graeme. And rws, yeah. I'll post internal and other types of rhyme soon. :)
____________________ "We say what we can when we want to speak about the Ineffable One about whom nothing can be said in the proper sense. We must either keep silence or use words in a transformed way."
Isaac of Stella
____________________ "We say what we can when we want to speak about the Ineffable One about whom nothing can be said in the proper sense. We must either keep silence or use words in a transformed way."
Isaac of Stella
I've added a bit here on Types of Rhyme at the end.
____________________ "We say what we can when we want to speak about the Ineffable One about whom nothing can be said in the proper sense. We must either keep silence or use words in a transformed way."
Isaac of Stella
I read somewhere that someone had defined something like 56 different types of rhymes. However, I think there is a simpler way to define rhyme. The common denominator of rhyme is that one word have some type of sympathetic resonance with another. It is a similar concept to harmonics in music. There are certain types of harmonics that are easily recognized, the most obvious is an octave (from one c to the next higher c). This would be basically equivalent to a perfect rhyme: night, slight, bright, and so on. Masculine rhyme would be basically equivalent to a perfect fifth (c-g), feminine = a perfect fourth (c-f). As with music the most basic types of end rhymes are recognize by the majority of people. Such popular music and country and western, and pop, incorporate and emphasize these more basic and easily recognized harmonics. Less popular music such as Jazz or classical incorporate more subtle harmonics, and thus a certain amount of training or study is needed to appreciate. The same is true in poetry. Simple rhyming couplets, or nursery rhymes could be said to be equivalent to popular music. Just as a virtually untrained person can write a popular song using three basic cords, so too can the majority of people write a few lines with the same simple end rhymes. In music as in poetry, as the complexity increases, it takes progressively more training to recognize and appreciate, and more skill and talent to compose.
Dale
____________________ Please do not take my critique too much to heart,
I would offer Coleridge suggestions on his art.
How long after picking up the brush until the first masterpiece?
