The Outerview Series: Part V - Rhyming is Fun

     At this point we understand what poetry is:  memorable speech.  We know where it is:  primarily, in song lyrics.  We know that lines find their rhythm, such that we can discern the cadence and meter by scanning whole poems from right to left.  Now we come to the fun part.

     A perfect rhyme is a repetition of a vowel sound and an ensuing consonant sound, if there is one, in a particular position.  Most often that position is at the end ("terminal" rhyme) of the line but it can be at the beginning ("initial" rhyme) or middle ("medial" rhyme) of the line.  For example, here is a closing iambic pentameter couplet:

We see | the rage, | but through | the lie | we learn
that we | don't age. | Not you | and I. | We burn.

     "See" and "we" are initial rhymes.  "Rage/age", "through/you", and "lie/I" are medial rhymes.  "Learn" and "burn" are traditional end-rhymes.

     Perfect rhyme works best with lighter, shorter works:  nursery rhymes, teen-oriented hip pop and rap, and humorous pieces.

     For serious works perfect rhyme is fine for a while but, like fish and visitors, becomes awkward after a while.  Long works like Shakespeare's plays and John Milton's "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained" are in blank verse:  meter, yes;  rhyme, no.

     In order to lessen the effect of rhyme in serious verse poets will adopt one of three tactics:  distance, form, or imperfect rhymes.

Distance

      Increasing the number of syllables between the two rhyming words makes their similarity less salient.  For example, in iambic pentameter the end rhymes will be ten syllables apart (e.g. "learn" and "burn" above).  Instead of having the next line rhyme, as in rhyming couplets, we could have rhymes skip a line or more.  For example, sonnets can have odd and even numbered lines rhyme.  We call this a rhyme scheme, with letters starting with "A" assigned to each different rhyme:  ABAB or even ABCABC where we wait three lines before the sound will be repeated.

      In bacchic (i.e. de-DUM-DUM) monometer there are only two words between the rhymes, as we see with "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks:

We real cool.
We skip school.
We lurk late.
We strike straight.

     Note that this involves both initial and terminal rhymes, and the initial one, "We", repeats the exact same word.  This is called "identical" rhyming as we see in the first two lines here:

It takes trouble, and it takes courage to be free.
But you 'll find, it you are soft enough, love will hang around for free.
And the coldest bed I found does not hold one but it will hold three.
I hope you never have to know what that can mean. - "Cactus" by Ferron

Form

      We can break the lines differently so that the non-identical rhymes don't stand out as much.  For example, "We Real Cool" is actually written and performed like this:

We real cool.  We
skip school.  We
lurk late.  We
strike straight.

      This linebreaking is called "curgination".  Its effect is greater when the rhymes are more distant, as we see with DPK's classic curgina, "Beans":

September came like winter's
ailing child but
left us
viewing Valparaiso's pride. Your face was
always saddest when you smiled. You smiled as every
doctored moment lied. You lie with
orphans' parents, long
reviled.

    The hesitations before each tactful euphemism distract us from the rhyme.  For many, only when it is decurginated does the ABABA rhyme scheme become evident:

September came like winter's ailing child
but left us viewing Valparaiso's pride.
Your face was always saddest when you smiled.
You smiled as every doctored moment lied.
You lie with orphans' parents, long reviled.

    Another use of form to hide perfect rhymes is corata:  presenting the poem in paragraph form:

     The spring retreats, its promise spent on tulip kiss and poplar musk.  The summer's greening rays relent when day meets dark at purpling dusk.  Twin tumbleweeds roll past and part the dirt to sketch in chicken tracks, so soon obscured: convectional art mandalas till the winds relax.

     Can you see where the lines end?

     The sonnet exhibits a glaring exception to this distancing:  A sudden tightening of the rhyme scheme from ABAB or even ABCABC into a couplet signals the end of the poem.  Those last two lines sound like a "Ta Da!" finale:

Come autumn, combines comb the fields
to harvest gold canola oil
for toast before November yields
its cold. Like whitened coffee, soil
beneath integument snow extols
the blood and bone of remnant souls.

     T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" was a masterpiece in terms of distancing and softening perfect rhymes through the use of form.  In this case, that involved heterometric iambic lines with a lot of anacrusis (i.e. extra syllables before the iambs kick in, marked here in curly brackets). 

{Let} | us go | then, you | and I,
{When} | the ev'n|ing is | spread out | against | the sky

     This is in addition to these long lines of iambic heptameter (in addition to trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, and hexameter) creating distance between the rhymes:

My morn|ing coat, | my col|lar mount|ing firm|ly to | the chin,
My neck|tie rich | and mod|est, but | assert|ed by | a sim|ple pin

Imperfect Rhymes

     The most sophisticated and effective way to de-emphasize rhymes is to avoid perfect ones.  Find sounds that sound similar, not identical.  Think of "m" versus "n", or "layer" versus "air".  Or "bits" versus "bets".  These go by many names:  slant rhymes, half rhymes, off and consonantal rhymes ("pick" & "rock"), etc.  The strongest and most common, especially in singing, is assonantal rhymes where only the vowels are repeated.  "Cool" versus "boot".

     We saw an example of this above with Ferron's "Cactus":  free-free-three-mean.  Here is another from the same song, with "owl" rhyming with "town":

It's been a year
since you left home for higher ground.
In the distance I hear a hoot owl
ask the only question I have found
to be worthy of the sound it makes
as it breaks the silence of your old town.
These letters are another way to love you.

      Think of rhyming as a subset of our next topic:

Next:  Sonics

The Outerview Series

The Outerview Series:  Part I - What is poetry?
The Outerview Series:  Part II - Where is poetry?
The Outerview Series:  Part III - What is Rhythm?
The Outerview Series:  Part IV - Scan Poems Backward
The Outerview Series:  Part V - Rhyming is Fun
The Outerview Series:  Part VI - Super Sonics
The Outerview Series:  Part VII - Production
The Outerview Series:  Part VIII - Manufacturing an Audience
The Outerview Series:  Part IX - Crafting Drafts
The Outerview Series:  Part X - Production
The Outerview Series:  Part XI - Attracting and Impressing
The Outerview Series:  Part XII - The Meaning of Meaning

Practical Poetry: Forms, media and venues

     At this point, the student is expected to understand the basics:

• The definition of poetry (i.e. verbatim speech);



• scansion;



• that song lyrics have eclipsed [spoken] poetry in our culture; and,



• that a market for [spoken] poetry will have to be created.

     In this installment we flesh out the student's understanding of technique and discuss how and where an audience for poetry might be built. 

The Elements of Form

     Because it needs to be memorized and reproduced word-for-word, all English language poetry, as opposed to prose or the hybrid, prose poetry, has one thing in common:  mnemonics.  The simplest of these is concision.  It isn't a chore to memorize William C. Williams "The Red Wheelbarrow".  Even epic poems exhibit an economy of language. 

     The longer the piece, the more repetitions the poet uses, including:

1. Choruses
   
        A chorus virtually ensures that we'll recall at least part of a song we hear.



2. Repetends  
   
        Sections of Federico Garcia Lorca's "Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías", arguably the greatest poem of the 20th Century, featured lines like "a las cinco de la tarde" ("at five o'clock in the afternoon") and "¡No quiero verla!" ("I don't want to see it!").  Villanelles and some other forms rely on repetends.  The issue is:  "Why is this person saying the same thing over and over again?"



3. Anaphora and Anadiplosis

     Starting sentences with phrases from the beginning (anaphora) or ending (anadiplosis) of the previous sentence is an effective way of building drama.


4. Sonics
   
        Along with rhythms, the judicious use and melodious repetition of sounds is what distinguishes poetry from prose.  The master of craft employs long (e.g. "shawnee") sounds to slow down the pace, sharper ones (e.g. "pit") to build excitement.  Repetitions include alliteration, consonance, assonance and, most saliently, rhyme (which deserves a discussion of its own).  The general rule for rhyme is this:  the less serious your poem the more perfect and proximate your rhymes should be.
   
        Consider all the repetitions in this uniquely effective advertising jingle:
   
   You'll won|der where | the yel|low went
   when you brush | your teeth | with Pep|sodent!
   
        Note the assonance of "You'll"/"you" and "won"/"brush" in the first foot and in all three syllables of "yellow went"/"Pepsodent", along with the alliteration of "w" sounds throughout.  Together with the iambic tetrameter and the alliterative anacrusis of "when" after "went", it's easy to see why this brainworm survives as the single most brilliant couplet of the 20th Century, if not of all time.  Even those who would dearly love to forget it cannot.  That is what poetry does.  That is what poetry is.  Nothing more, nothing less.  This is a point that every succcessful poet knows and that no failed poet understands.



5. Rhythms
   
       Patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables form feet in verse and rhythm strings in free verse.  After a pattern like "de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM de-", knowing that the next syllable is probably stressed can help a forgetful reciter.



6. Meter
   
       Meter is the quantification of something, usually either feet (accentual-syllabic) or beats (accentual).  Notice that "The Red Wheelbarrow" has the same number of words (three then one) and beats (two then one) in alternating lines.  Such poems with two or more meters (i.e. accentual dimeter and monometer in this case) are called "heterometrical".  T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" has no less than four meters (trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter and two heptametric lines) but only one rhythm (iambic).

Paradise Has No Colonies

     There are two aspects of a poetic form:  structure and application.  Structure is the more visible:  a villanelle has repetends and rhymes in set places, a sonnet is usually 14 lines of rhyming iambic pentameter, et cetera.  Anyone can invent a new structure but, until it has a "killer application" and is emulated by others, it isn't considered a form.  For example, "Paradise Has No Colonies" (on left) is a "cada línea"*, a structure wherein the whole sounds like a prosey, prosaic story while each line, examined in isolation, addresses a different aspect of that theme.  Until others write successful poems using this format it is not a form**.

     During this process a general purpose develops.  For example, the sonnet usually entails a condition in the octave and then a turn ("volta") toward a resolution in the sestet.  Traditionally, sonnets have tended to pursue romantic motifs but I see no reason why a poet couldn't use the form to expound on, say, politics (i.e. where the condition is dire and the resolution is the writer's proposed political solution).

     The theme of a villanelle rests on the purpose for repeating a line over and over again.  Is the person crazy?  Often, yes, with worry in the case of "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas.  Sometimes an event is being repeated.  In "Holly Would" an old Parisian man remembers his bride doing a striptease:  "another pearl black button comes undone".

      Other forms include the rondeau or rondel, the triolet, limerick, pantoum, ghazal, and sestina.  Coincidentally, the two most famous poems of the 20th Century were both in form--a sonnet and a rondeau--and were written by members of the Canadian armed forces who died scant months later.

     Forms can be combined.  "¡Ni Una Más!" is both a sonnet and a glose.

Media and Venues

     Poetry can be presented in written, oral, audiovisual or multimedia format.  One might think that print and pixel poetry would be similar.

    "Text is text, right?"

      Well, for starters, internet text has many advantages over books and magazines, among them:

• Multimedia
  
       The same poem can be presented as a text, audio, audiovisual or as background to a video.  Just as it is best to watch a Shakespearean play first and then study the script, text usually works best as secondary exposure.  Enjoy first.  Study later.



• Hypertext
  
        One can link the words and phrases not only to references (such that there would be no need for T. S. Eliot's footnotes) but to related videos.



• Graphics
  
       Web sites can employ pictures with far greater ease and far less expense than print publications.  Some of these can be moving GIFs or, of course, videos.

     Even without these extra capabilities, comparing print text to pixel text without embellishments, there is a qualitative and quantitative difference.  The underlying reason for this can be described in one word:  readership.  Magazines that mirror their content on the web soon discover that the same poem by the same poet gets significantly more attention online.  Over time, this creates [gasp!] competition for that attention***.  Eager for any edge, students learn the elements of the craft, which is the raison d'être for this course and blog. 

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Footnotes:

* A "cada frase" would do the same thing, changing subthemes in each phrase.

** It may be worth noting that, without an audience--a testing ground--for poetry, it is difficult to establish new forms.  Structures, yes.  Forms, no.

*** In the current print world competition ends with publication.  Online, the competition begins with publication.

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