Welcome to the Goretti Publications Podcast; this is Donald Goodman. This is Season 1, Episode 4: rhyme. This episode, let's discuss one of the most important rules in worldwide poetry: rhyme. Rhyme has become almost a byword for people ignorant of poetry. The foolish rube, who knows nothing of sophisticated modern free verse, guffaws and says, “That ain't poetry; it don't even rhyme!” Yet rhyme is a fundamental poetic form in countless languages; most familiar to our readers is likely Latin poetry from the patristic period onward (most medieval Latin poetry, for example, is rhyming) and modern English poetry (English poetry has used rhyme predominantly in the modern period, and at least sometimes since the Middle English period), but rhyme is far from limited to them. Rhyme is used in Celtic poetry (with very precise rules regarding what rhymes with what given Celtic consonant mutations); various Chinese languages (rhyming often includes synonymous *tones*, in addition to vowel and consonant rhymes); French poetry (which often uses *identical rhymes*, since so many French words sounds similar but are spelled quite differently, a type of rhyme frowned upon in English verse); German; modern Greek; Polish; even Arabic, not to mention the commonly-known forms in Spanish and Italian (Dante's _terza rima_ is, or at least should be, very well known). Rhyme is so remarkably widespread that it must be doing *something* useful; let's take a look at rhyme in poetry, and explore what power it can have. But first, what exactly is rhyme? How do we decide what words rhyme with what? At first glance, this may seem a childish question, literally; don't we regularly ask small children what rhymes with something, and regularly get correct answers? And sometimes it is foolish; we all agree, for example, that “love” rhymes with “dove”. But does “love” rhyme with “move”? They are both spelled with the same endings, after all, even if they aren't spoken the same way. For that matter, does “love” rhyme with ”love” itself? If multisyllabic words share the same end sound but not others, do they still rhyme? In other words, does ”broker” rhyme with both ”toker” and ”braker”? For that matter, what if only the vowel is the same, but the final consonant is not? In other words, does ”brake” rhyme with ”pate”? We need to explore a little more to answer these questions. *Tail rhyme* is when the final syllables in two words have the same closing sounds; that is, the same final vowel and consonant sounds. This is the paradigmatic meaning of “rhyme” in English poetry. This is how we know that “take”, “bake”, and “cake” all rhyme, but ”take” and ”pate” do not; in the second case, the final vowel is the same, but the final consonant is different, so they don't rhyme. That is, they don't *completely* rhyme. When two words have the same final vowel but a different final consonant, we often call this *imperfect*, or *feminine*, rhyme (though be aware that “feminine rhyme” sometimes means something else, which we'll talk about shortly). While in English poetry this isn't good enough to match a rhyme scheme (at least most of the time), it can serve for internal rhyme (rhyme in the middle of, rather than the end, of a line), and thus serve to bind ideas and portions of the verse together. Sometimes, in English, the final syllable of a words is *unstressed*, and the second-to-last syllable, called the “penult”, is stressed. We used an example above: “broker” and “toker”. This is the other kind of rhyme that is often called “feminine” rhyme: a stressed penultimate syllable rhyming with a another stressed penultimate syllable. If the unstressed final syllables also rhyme, this is a *double rhyme*, or, as previously mentioned, a *feminine rhyme*. This is seen as weaker than a single or masculine rhyme, because the final syllables are unstressed; in stress-final meters, like iambic, the unstressed final syllable is often left dangling on the end of the line as an extra syllable, further weakening the effect. Take, as an example, Sonnet 20 of the great Bard, Shakespeare, which consists of fourteen straight feminine lines: A woman's face with nature's own hand painted, Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion; A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted with shifting change, as is false women's fashion. There is no need to go through the whole sonnet, but it is clear from the consistency that the Bard was very deliberately using a feminine rhyme structure to help make his point. Notice here that the strong, stressed rhyme on the first syllables of the final words is matched by a rhyme on the unstressed final syllables. Because of this, the extra unstressed syllable on the end of the line “doesn't count”, and in most English verse these are considered perfectly well-formed lines of iambic pentameter, despite each having eleven, rather than ten, syllables. Other languages would not find this acceptable. In addition to double (or feminine) rhyme and imperfect (or feminine again) rhyme, there is *identical rhyme*, in which the entire syllable—onset, vowel, and final consonant—are the same. This is different from rhyming a word with itself, which is usually considered very poor form. A good example would be rhyming homonyms, perhaps “bear”, b-e-a-r, and “bare”, b-a-r-e. There is also so-called “slanted” rhyme; as with imperfect rhyme, only half of the final syllables match, but in this case it is the final *consonant* rather than the final *vowel*. This would be like attempting to rhyme, for example, “top” and “hap”; your host has not noticed anyone attempting to pass this off as truly rhyming in English verse, but perhaps it could be used in non-stressed positions as a technique to bind words together. Then there is “eye-rhyme”, in which poets attempt to link words that are spelled the same, but not pronounced the same. In English poetry, these are generally *not* considered truly rhyming. We have already seen the example of “love” and “move”. Some poets are misled to relying on eye-rhyme through the example of some of our greats; Shakespeare, for example, often rhymed “love” with various other words spelled that way; we saw one last episode, in Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments; love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remove to remove. Or John Donne, in “The Bait”: Come live with me, and be my love, and we will some new pleasures prove But they are deceived. When Shakespeare and Donne wrote these lines, the words *did*, in fact, rhyme; that is, “love” was still pronounced much more like “loov”, and thus did rhyme with “move” and “prove”; for various reasons, the pronunciation of one shifted and the others did not (at least, not as much and not in the same direction). So if the poet wishes to rhyme these words, he should pronounce them as they once were pronounced, and he should be aware that most people probably won't get it. We could make various further distinctions, but this will suffice for now. Now that we're aware of what rhyme is, at least in its broad strokes, why should we bother to use it? Rhyme serves to bind the parts of a poem together, to give it structure and sonorance. It isn't hard to consider the latter; lines that rhyme *sound really nice*. Let's think of a few couplets as examples: No love toward others in that bosom sits that on himself such murderous shame commits. That is the closing of Sonnet 9. Or this: So long as men can breath or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee. The close of Sonnet 18. Can one phrase these same ideas well, without rhyme? Of course. Does the rhyme serve to bind the lines tightly together, aid the memory, and impress on the reader the ideas the lines express? Also, of course. The words which the poet chose to rhyme can also be pretty important. Let's read that closing couplet from Sonnet 18 again: So long as men can breath or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee. The Bard might have rhymed different words here; but the fact that he chose to rhyme “thee” puts additional emphasis on the recipient of the poem, his love (so radiant that he can't compare her to a summer's day). Had he chosen to rhyme some other concept (say, the “lines” of his poem), the emphasis would more fall on his own verse, rather than on what his verse commemorates. This sonnet, number 18, provides a superb example of the importance of rhyme for granting structure, so let's read it in its entirety: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer's lease hath all too short a date: sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, and often is his gold complexion dimmed, and every fair from fair sometime declines, by chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed; but thy eternal summer shall not fade, nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, nor shall death brag thou wandrest in his shade, when in eternal lines to time thou growst; so long as men can breath or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee. One of the quintessential love poems in our language, and for good reason. See how this poem is divided, by its rhyme scheme, into four distinct parts. The first, which rhymes a b a b, and the second, which rhymes c d c d, discuss how imperfect a summer's day really is; sometimes too hot, sometimes rainy, always quick to end; unlike the poet's love, whos is “more lovely and more temperate”. The third, which rhymes e f e f, turns things around, pointing out that his love is an “eternal summer” which “shall not fade”, because her beauty is so great as to be feted by the poet, who has recorded it forever in his lines. Then, finally, the couplet at the end: her beauty will live forever in this verse. Another splendid example of rhyme scheme binding lines together is the great _terza rima_. Dante may be the greatest example of it; my Italian is poor enough that I won't attempt an example, but Robert Frost's famous “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” gives a great example of the concept, with a different rhyme scheme: Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer to stop without a farmhouse near between the woods and frozen lake the darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake to ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep. The rhyme scheme here is a a b a, which is unremarkable in itself; but the b, the third line, rhymes with the *next* verse, as well, which is b b c b, in which the third line rhymes with still the next verse, and so on. Each verse is tied to the last verse with the rhyme in the third line; he finishes in the last verse with the same rhyme for all four lines. This technique is very effective, and this poem is still rightly taught as a splendid example of the use of structural rhyme. The free-verser will often criticize rhyme as too constricting; what if the poet, for example, chooses to rhyme “life”? Then he's basically stuck proceeding to “knife” and “wife”, and all of a sudden he's writing a poem about murder instead of whatever he set out to do. But this is not a criticism of the poem; it's a criticism of the *poor poet*, who chooses poor rhymes and for poor reasons. Yes, rhyme can be misused, and can be used to produce some of the foulest doggerel imaginable. Need we mention the English folk poem on the Fifth of November? Remember, remember! The Fifth of November! The gunpowder treason and plot! I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot! This is clumsy and foolish, bad as poetry and bad as folk rhymes; why anyone should ever repeat it again, I do not know. But it is a poor use of rhyme, not rhyme itself, that is the problem here. Choosing poor rhymes can be a problem, but the poet is responsible for choosing *good* rhymes. Nor is English at a loss for good rhymes, as our original poem for this episode testifies, The Tulip Grows. Let's hear it now. The first warm day in spring, the tulips rise, first spreading out two broad leaves, either way; and then the flower, shyly, as in play, pokes its unopen'd head up toward the skies; its petals open, bringing loving sighs; now stretching towards the bright, warm light of day, as if it's guided by some tiny fey, it giveth joy to foolish as to wise. But scarcely born, already beauty dies: its petals on the ground all shortly lay; upon now barren leaves falls summer's ray; the life of spring the later year belies. In autumn, creeping coldness now applies long-reaching tendrils to where tulips lay; and squeezing out whatever life it may, to end this breathless beauty nature tries. And suff'ring much, that loveliness now lies beneath the earth as winter seeks to slay all growing things in darkness, cold and gray; in sorrow man to nature's God now cries. But though the tulip must long agonize, it doth retreat but never doth betray; to suff'ring below ground it doth convey the gifts that nature during spring supplies. It from th' eternal combat never shies; for in the spring, near dead from that long fray, as answering some silent reveille, the tulip will its journey now reprise. So love must ever be for those it ties; for sorrow ever seeks to lead astray, but sorrow cannot end, can but delay, and by long trial love only amplifies. On suffering to flourish love relies; he loves not most who seeks to pain allay, but he who for his friend loves his dismay; from sorrow greater love will e'er arise. For meaning, this poem reflects on the tulip, a perennial which arises every year from a bulb, grows, blooms, then retreats back to its bulb in the winter. We note how it uses what God gives it in the spring and summer to survive throughout the hard, suffering months of winter. We then reflect on how, for us in this vale of tears, suffering is necessary for growth and flourishing; without this hardship of the winter, we cannot have the beautiful flourishing of the spring. But more to the point of this episode, this is a thirty-six-line poem in iambic pentameter which uses *two rhymes for the entire work*, never forcing the rhymes, and remaining firmly on point. Its rhyme structure, a b b a, means that the last line of each verse rhymes with the first of the next, tying every verse to the following and the preceeding, allowing it to flow across its nine stanzas smoothly and without break. The rhyme is *vital* to this poem, drawing focus to what matters and bringing the whole work together. It is a demonstration of the power of rhyme in English poetry. So rhyme is not the tool of the foolish and ignorant rube; it is, in fact, a complex and incredible useful tool for the experienced and effective poet. Focus on rhyme; listen for rhyme; consider what the poet is saying with it. This will substantially enrich your consideration of rhyming poetry, and help you see the wealth that can be contained in such a simple tool. Thank you for listening; until next time, this has been the Goretti Publications Podcast.