read write prompt #75: rhyme time?

by Tom Adam

Rhyme is one of the major elements of poetic form and is often the basis for the arrangement of stanzas. When used well, rhyme can bring cohesion and flow to a poem. Of course, when used poorly it can be sing-songy, predictable and distracting.

Your prompt this week is to indulge in rhyme … all kinds of rhyme. However you choose to do it, keep the same sounds rolling throughout the poem. If you could use a little guidance on bringing more rhyme into your poem this week, keep on reading. Otherwise stop back next Thursday to share your poetic endeavors for the week!

Most technically, rhyme is the repetition of a vowel and consonant sound at the end of a line. Loosely, and quite reasonably, we can call this end rhyme. Using that same repetition of a vowel and consonant sound but putting that within the line results in internal rhyme. Branching out into more loose definitions of rhyme, or at least closely related areas, we have alliteration (the repetition of a sound, either vowels or consonants at the beginning of the line), assonance (the repetition of vowel sounds contained within words) and consonance (the repetition of consonant sounds within words). For the most part, end rhyme is the type of rhyme used in the definition of poetic forms. The other rhymes are used to enhance the musicality of the language or for other effects.

Referring to the rhyming words themselves, these also can be broken into some loose (and oversimplified) categories:

• Masculine rhymes are monosyllabic rhymes occurring on the final and stressed syllable of a line (“deal” / “keel”).
• Feminine rhymes are disyllabic rhymes occurring with the rhyming syllable on the last stressed syllable of a line which has an unstressed syllable that is identical between the two words (“dealer” / “feeler”).
• Weak rhyme is rhyming that occurs on an unstressed syllable (“diver” / “favor”). As rhymes go, this is not a highly regarded technique.
• Near rhyme (often called slant rhyme) occurs when the rhyming syllables don’t exactly match. The vowel sounds may be identical or just very similar as can the consonant sounds (“fame” / “fain,” “port” / “part”).

Forms are often based on how the various rhymes cap each line. In many languages, rhyme comes so easily it’s almost harder to not rhyme, but in English, rhyme is more difficult to come by, with fewer, overall, words that rhyme.

The simplest form, usually a type of stanza, is the couplet — two rhyming lines (aa). If they happen to be lines of iambic pentameter, it is a heroic couplet, a favorite of Alexander Pope.

Tercets add a third line and more combinations, especially when the rhyme scheme stretches across stanzas. Something like aab or abb can work. These can be extended to aab ccd, aab bbc, aab ccb, abb acc, abb cbb. Dante popularized the terza rima in the Commedia. Terza Rima is a series of interlocking tercets: aba bcb cdc.

Quatrains, a common stanza length, have a very broad arrangement of rhyme schemes. Abab and abcb are common schemes and are used in the ballad. Brace rhyme (abba) can be extended as in the octave of a Petrarchan sonnet into a series of interlocking brace rhymes (abbaabba). Similar to the terza rima, the Spenserian sonnet rhymes abab bcbc cdcd ee.

Once at five or more lines, rhyme schemes tend to be extensions or combinations of those above. You can look at the limerick as a brace rhyme ending in a couplet (abbaa). Ababa (followed by bcbcb or cdcdc) is one way to lengthen the ballad’s alternating rhymes. At six lines abaaba, abcabc, abccab have all been used.

Once the stanzas start getting longer, it’s important to keep in mind the distance between a given pair of rhyme words. Rhymes immediately following each other are very close but can be overpowering, especially if they are primarily masculine rhymes. Longer and more interwoven rhymes have a greater tonal variety: abcabc has a feeling of progression, while brace rhymes give a compartmentalized feeling. Once they are more than four or five lines apart, the rhyming lines start to lose their effect because there is just too much distance between them. This can yield a very subtle sort of rhyme that can almost be a background music to the poem.

The real thing to bear in mind is that any given form is simply a traditional way of arranging the elements of prosody: the rhythm, the rhyme, certain shifts in meaning (e.g., the volta in a Petrarchan Sonnet, or the rhetorical couplet closing the Shakespearean sonnet). Most forms have had numerous shifts and changes over the years as poets have been adventurous in their application. That is the real tradition of formal poetry — the continual change and evolution of form.