Well, is it about time for some rhyme? We’ve met for poetry for a year now, but not
a word about rhyme.
Doug argues that sonnets that don’t rhyme aren’t really
sonnets. I won’t argue that point. Many of the best sonnets in several
languages—some of the best poems in several languages—are built on a strict
rhyme scheme: abba abba cdc cdc is
one; abab abab cde cde is another;
and there is always abab cdcd eded ff,
and abab bcbc cdcd ee no less!
But a rhyme scheme
isn’t much of an adequate definition of the figure. What is rhyme? Repetition, for one (obvious) thing. And pattern, as in the sonnet examples above. Rhyme is sound—vowels and consonants,
diphthongs too. Rhyme is like to
like.
A rhyme works by contrast,
by asserting difference. And difference, in this sense, works only if
there is a basis for or an expectation of similarity. For a rhyme to work, difference within
similarity must pertain, somewhere, somehow. Two or more words must be the same
in one key aspect, but different in others:
Bow / now; bow / bough.
I think what I’m trying to get around to is this: rhyme is
various. Here are some examples of the
many kinds of rhyme you can deploy in a poem:
Exact or perfect rhyme: Now / cow / how / wow
Close or near rhyme: Now / brow / chow / prow / plow
Off rhyme: Now / know / new / nigh
The above are variations of “whole” or “masculine” or
“simple” rhyme.[1] The term “simple” just means a rhyming
structure consisting of a single syllable or phoneme. You might ask, Why is the pairing now / now not a rhyme? The answer is that now / now is mere repetition or duplication. Now /
cow is rhyme because a change has been inserted orthographically: a c for an n.
You can see in the other two kinds of simple rhyme a veering
away from the exact: much remains in each grouping that is similar—the terminal
ow’s, for instance—but difference becomes more and more evident. New vowels are
introduced, and initial consonants are inserted; but the rhyme pattern remains
monosyllabic. Also note in the third
example a purely visual differentiation in the “k” of know, and the “gh” of nigh. In the latter case, the rhyme is auditory
though not typographical: “gh” is pronounced similarly to “ow.”
But what about more complex rhyme patterns, the multisyllabic,
or “feminine” forms? Here are examples:
Exact rhyme: insight / inflight; unkind / unwind; interleave / interweave
Close rhyme: oral / aural / aureole; inferior / interior; instance / insistence
Off rhyme: energetic / panegyric; industry / ancestry; oral / aerial
You can see in the above the progressions away from
exactness to likeness toward mere resemblance.
If you look closer, you’ll also note other aspects of rhyme that don’t
get much attention. Look, for example,
at the similarities of stressed and unstressed syllables in some of the pairs,
where the stressed parts occur at the same position within the words and occur
with similar force and duration. Or
again, look at the insertion of “sis” in the middle of instance, which both preserves and violates the rhyme at the same
time!
Here’s an interesting definition or description of rhyme:
Rhyme is not only possible in a language, but inevitable, because “the number
of sounds available for any language is limited and its many words must be
combinations and permutations of its few sounds.”[2]
Some questions to think about as you work on a rhyming poem
for next Wednesday . . .
- Why DON’T we rhyme exclusively today, as poets once did? In other words, why isn’t rhyme a requirement today?
- Why do so many poets apologize and make excuses for rhyme in their poems?
- Why isn’t rhyme coupled more often with “numbers,” that is, with regular meter and rhythm?
- Why is rhyme so often associated with light verse and other forms a non-serious poetry? In fact, why is it so hard to use rhyme in dramatic or “heightened” poetry?
- Why is rhyme now considered inauthentic?
Of course, one answer to all these questions is that you can
take rhyme too far. The British (and
certain slavish American poetasters) used to rhyme “again” with “pain.” I lived and worked in the UK for four years;
never heard any native do that! Not even
a poet. Another might be that we no
longer think of poetry as separate from ordinary speech and breath (thank you,
William Carlos Williams). Authentic
poetry—that is, an authentic voice in a poem—speaks ordinary, maybe even
extraordinary, but not pretty.
Following are some examples of poems using different kinds
of rhyme.
Horticulture
On Her First
Semester
at the University
of Georgia – Athens
Auden (W. H.)
Once made a strong case
That universities not pardon
Graduates who don’t learn to garden.
Diplomas and plaudits
Should be as subject to audits
By horticulturists
As by multiculturalists,
Or so he believed.
Now, some are relieved
That today’s formal schooling
Requires no such fooling
Around.
That is, the capped-and-gowned
Set learn a curricula
Of nothing so particular
As gardening
Which, though it prevents the
hardening
Of the soul and mind
And encourages our kind
To make an alloy
Of work and joy,
Is meticulous and slow,
A too deliberate way to know.
But consider, you
Are a kind of garden, too,
Where careful tilling
Can produce, if not thrilling
Results,
Then at least a mulch
Of humanity I’m
Convinced is sublime.
Thus in Athens, be fertile
With the myrtle,
So to speak.
It’s as good as learning Greek.
A Place Named Nome
(Poem to May Sarton on Anne’s
Birthday, August 8, 1995)
Poems, some say, must rhyme,
But as for me, well, not all the time,
Which is to say, assertively, I’m
A person, a poet, a puttering enzyme
Of the type who frequently seem
To be lost, lazily, as in a dream
Upon a gurgling, wordful stream
Whose wordy wavelets gleam
Brightly, like liquid flame.
It’s not important, always, to frame
Your thoughts, or make them sound the same
At the end of each line, and no shame
Either, if you make room
Occasionally for the half-rhyme
Which, in poetry, is the rim
Of expectation, where to roam
Too long and too far from home
Leads to strange places with strange names like Nome,
Alaska, which to any worldly genome
Like you, like me, are poem, sweet poem.
“Clear Water in a Brilliant Bowl”
The Draycott, you know, is all that’s left of today.
Cadogan Gardens is pedestrianless.
In London all is surveilled, all surveilling.
The hotel staff slip farther and farther away.
From the earpiece: “I don’t feel so safe.”
Outside, a sycamore offers a lurker shade.
Through an open window someone’s shouting
Something ugly. Things
begin to chafe.
Your voice, lodged in my ear, feels the ocean
Away it is. I couldn’t
possibly help you, nor you me,
Not from here. Here, where
I see on a table
Clear water in a brilliant bowl — a notion
Somebody had an hour ago but forgot
To fulfill with flower heads from some pot.
Rondeau Saint Martin
We were so furious
when we heard the curious
news about Saint
Martin & his glorious
old paint,
we issued a joint
communiqué, a point-by-point
rebuttal of the serious
plot to anoint
a horse, of all creatures, in that delirious
rite. It does worry us,
the shirt off his back.
It’s injurious,
anent:
the weariness
of the world. It’s never spent.
[1] I
am going to set aside the obviously gendered implication here, except to say
that men have defined the terms of poetry, as they have so much else in
civilization. There are workarounds:
whole rhyme, for instance, or mono-syllabic rhyme.
[2] Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics,
1974.
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