Introduction

There is no poetic technique better known than rhyme. For many people, rhyme is synonymous with poetry. If you’re one of those people, that’s okay. It can be hard to believe that a piece of writing that doesn’t use rhyme can still be a poem. (Don’t worry, we’ll get to that lesson.)

You might be able to recognize rhyme, but have you ever taken a moment to think about what it really is? Rhyme is simply the correspondence of sounds or words that sound like one another. Often we talk about rhyme in terms of multiples: what word rhymes with “orange?” Rhyme cannot exist with one term.

There are many types of rhyme, but the two broadest categories are perfect rhyme and general rhyme. Perfect rhymes may be masculine, when the stress is on the final syllable of the words (i.e., cat and pat), or feminine, when the stress is on the penultimate syllable of the words (i.e., stocking and rocking). General rhymes comprise any sonic harmony or relation in words. Weak rhymes, half-rhymes, and even assonance, where vowel sounds are repeated, are examples of general rhymes. Mind and mine, for instance, constitute a general rhyme.

Why do poets use rhyme? For starters, it’s pleasing when sounds are in accordance. But rhyme is more than an aural pleasure. Rhyme allows poets to draw readers’ attention to key phrases; it helps them emphasize important themes or point to crucial images. When you notice rhyme, pay attention. The poet is telling you something important!

Rhyme

Rhyme in Poetry

So-called purists sometimes claim that unrhyming poems aren’t poems at all. But Anglo-Saxon poetry didn’t rhyme in the way that we usually think of rhyme. Even English epic or dramatic poetry from the last few hundred years needn’t rhyme. Nevertheless, many teachers like to hammer into impressionable young heads the notion that proper poems rhyme. The assumed alternative is anarchy: a disregard for form and history.

Because rhyme is very seductive, we need to be careful not to use it for its own sake, if this practice doesn’t suit the poem. A light-hearted poem might rely on strong rhyme (and a dum-de-dum rhythm). However, a more facile rhyme won’t suit a more contemplative poem, for example.

If we impose rhyme too early in the process, we risk sacrificing the content to the form, before we’ve even discovered the theme of our poem. When we write, we’re panning for gold. We often find we’re not actually writing the poem we think we’re writing! The ability to recognise our true theme, and to go beyond our first impulses or ideas, is partly what distinguishes a competent poet from a good one.

Rhyme creates echoes which refer you to other portions of the poem. Rhyme can reiterate an image or idea, making it memorable, even when used in a subtle way. What else? Of course rhyme is pleasurable and satisfying:

The basic rhymes in English are masculine, which is to say that the last syllable of the line is stressed: ‘lane’ rhymes with ‘pain’, but it also rhymes with ‘urbane’ since the last syllable of ‘urbane’ is stressed … With feminine rhymes it is normally the penultimate syllable that is stressed and therefore contains the rhyme-sound: ‘dearly’ rhymes with ‘nearly’, but also with ‘sincerely’ and ‘cavalierly’.
(Fenton, 2002, pp. 97–8)

Other Rhyming Techniques

• Near- or half rhymes are words or combinations of words that achieve only a partial rhyme. Half rhymes can be between words with just one syllable, or between parts of words, for example where the accented syllables rhyme with each other, but other syllables in the word don’t rhyme. For instance: cover–shovel; wily–piling, calling–fallen; wildebeest–building.
• Assonant rhyme refers to echoing vowel sounds, either in paired words at the end of lines, or as a kind of internal rhyme.
• Alliteration, or the echoing of consonant sounds, is often used as well. Look at these lines from Dylan Thomas’ ‘Fern Hill’:
  I should hear him fly with the high fields
  And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
  Dylan Thomas
• Mosaic rhyme uses two words in a feminine or triple rhyme. This ancient technique has a very musical quality. It was much used by Anglo-Saxon poets, and is also well used by modern poets.

Rhymes traditionally appear at the end of lines. When they are used within a line, we call this internal rhyme, as in this extract from Poe’s famous poem, ‘The raven’:

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter…
Edgar Allan Poe

A more modern example, where the rhyme is consecutive, is this extract from T.S. Eliot’s ‘Burnt Norton’:

Words move, music moves,
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach …
T.S. Eliot

A good way to explore rhyme is to let it develop organically, first by paying attention to all words – saying them aloud, rolling them around your tongue. What do they feel and sound like? Is there any onomatopoeia? The word ‘clank’ is onomatopeic, because of the ‘nk’ – and also the quality of the ‘a’. Think of more examples for yourself.

In bringing this sort of attention to the words you use, you will become more aware of language and of whatever natural rhymes you may use unconsciously. Later, you can build on this lucky accident of the unconscious, by instituting a regular pattern of rhyme, or rewriting the poem in an established form. Or you may use a rhyme scheme that is irregular. Even free verse poems are allowed to have rhymes! It is important that you have your own agenda for each poem. Some poets have even invented new forms. There isn’t anything to say you can’t do that, in the same way that poets can create new words. The words ‘chortle’ and ‘galumph’, for instance, coined by Lewis Carroll in his poem ‘Jabberwocky’, eventually came into regular usage.

What is Poetry?. Licensed by Boundless under CC BY 4.0 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/culture/literature-and-creative-writing/literature/what-poetry/content-section-6
http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/culture/literature-and-creative-writing/literature/what-poetry/content-section-7

Summary

Rhyme is a very frequently utilized literary device. You probably encounter rhyme in your day-to-day life all the time. Every time you turn on the radio, for example, odds are you’ll hear rhyme. It might come in a song, in an advertisement, in a jingle, or even in common speech. Rhyme is associated with poetry more than any other form of literature. In fact, if you read a story or novel or play that uses significant amounts of rhyme, you might find yourself wondering if you’re reading a poem.

There are two broad categories of rhyme that are important to delineate. Perfect rhymes are, well, just that: perfect. The syllables that correspond in a set of words do so exactly. General rhymes, on the other hand, are more forgiving. General rhymes could consist of sets of similar vowel sounds, matching or almost matching syllables, and even repeated first letters.

No matter what kind of rhyme you encounter, remember that the poet has used it for a reason, to create a particular effect in the poem. Ask yourself how the rhyme influences your understanding of the work. Does the rhyme create a tone? Does it draw you to particular moments in the poem? By engaging with the rhyme, rather than simply reading through it, you stand to gain a deeper appreciation of it as a writer’s tool.