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