It’s rhyme time!
Yes, you heard me right. After all those months bagging on sonnets, I’m giving in. Let’s talk about rhyme.
Rhyme is probably the first thing you learned about poetry: it’s just words that end in the same sound. Usually that sound isn’t an isolated consonant, it’s a vowel-phoneme pair. So “ing” or “eet” or “ite.”
Let’s do some rhyming, it’s springlike outside and I’m in a good mood.
I saw a cat
it had a hat
it’s not a bat
nor is it flat
You know what that poem has going for it besides rhyme? meter. We’ll get back to meter in a minute, but it’s not the focus of this month’s slam.
The rhyme in that case is “at” and if I were writing that poem out, I’d call it an A/A/A/A rhyme scheme. See, there are fancy ways to talk about rhyme in poetry. If by fancy you mean “we assign them some letters, in order.”
Let’s try another rhyme scheme
I saw a frog
and didn’t die
it was on a log
and so was I
Was that a little harder to read? Yeah, it was, because I messed with the meter in the third line. We’re still ignoring meter though, so this is an A/B/A/B poem.
I don’t know, y’all, I’m teaching this one inside out. I’ve written lots of posts on how to describe rhyme schemes, but I don’t think I’ve ever given the notation before explaining the notation. Did you figure it out? You assign letters A, B, C and so forth to the sounds in the words. Then instead of writing the words, you write the letters. Let’s try it on a famous poem, ok? Since it’s lovely and springy out, I’m gonna use Poe’s The Raven.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
So let’s look at those terminal words (the ones at the end of the line), ok? This poem is an, um.
eary is A
ore is B
apping is C
oor is… B again
oor, another B
ore, B.
So this poem is A/B/C/B/B/B
OR IS IT?
Rhymes don’t just have to be terminal words
So, funny thing about repeated sounds. They don’t just have to come at the ends of lines. We’ve assigned A to “eary” and B to “ore” and C to “apping” but let’s see how many times those sounds appear in the poem, per line?
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, (A+A)
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— (B)
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, (C+C)
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. (C+C+B)
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— (C+B)
Only this and nothing more.” (B)
See? I lied to you. I told you this was an A/B/C/B/B/B poem. But it’s not. Each sound repeats not only at the end of the line but internally.
That’s what we want to do this month: play with rhymes that don’t happen at the ends of lines.
IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE:
I’m not asking you for alliteration. That’s when the first sounds of the words are the same, like Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, or Betty Botter bought some butter. I’m asking for rhyme, the ends of the words.
BACK TO INTERNAL RHYMES.
So what were we talking about? Oh yes. Rhyme.
One of the things that Poe did amazingly well in The Raven was utilizing not just terminal but internal rhymes. He gets intense with it a few stanzas later:
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is and nothing more.”
How many rhymes do you see? Urtin? illed? eeting? a whole sequence: visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door? wow.
Fortunately for you, I’m not asking you to do the absolute most like Poe did.
What I am asking, for this month, is that you write a poem where the rhymes come not–or not only–at the ends of lines, but in the middle.
Hints, tips and tricks for the March slam
You don’t have to be Poe to write a poem with internal rhyme. In fact, we’ve explored internal rhyme in a few previous slams, including the dróttkvætt. The difference is, this time we’ve made it easy.
March slam: write a poem with internal rhyme.
Your rhyming words don’t have to all be the same sound. They don’t have to come at any particular place in the line. But we do want you to explore the repetition of sounds without making them all come at the ends of lines. So you can rhyme an end to a middle, two middles together, or all your first words in lines. Just include rhymes.
Tips:
- Try thinking of the idea for your poem and then picking out a bunch of rhyming words that seem pretty together and fit the theme
- It’s easiest to use internal rhyme if you also use meter; you can put those rhymes in a predictable place in the meter.
- Don’t get hung up on one pretty word. Rhyme to a different word if that one’s too hard.
- There are no rhymes for orange, silver, month, or purple.
A few words on meter:
I did promise you this. So. Meter is the way the “beats” of the poem’s “music” fit together. I’ve written tutorials on meter and scansion here, here, and here. They’re all a little different, so if one doesn’t make sense to you, another one might. Or you can do your own research: I think there are some great resources on YouTube which frankly I would have found more helpful as a beginning poet, since meter is largely about hearing, not counting. It’s not going to be enough to count your syllables if you want to use meter; you need to know where the stresses land.
If you write a metered poem, you can pick a specific place in the meter like Poe does here to rhyme.
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.
This is mostly in iambic octameter. Every fourth iamb has a rhyme. If that doesn’t make sense to you, go read those tutorials 🙂
About the author:
Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.
