More notes on rhyme

In my work on Deep-Step and Twice-Mortal I've used many rhymes. I've already discussed:

• the rhyme scheme I chose, terza rima
• the challenge of English rhyme

This post--this, less ambitious, post--shares notes on a couple of further aspects of rhyme.

I think (I think) that if you're using regular rhyme, you should try to vary the length of the rhyme-words. I think this variation especially matters if, as much modern rhyming verse does, your poem avoid pendant/feminine rhymes. And I think this variation especially matters if your rhyme scheme commits you to three rhyming sounds, not just a pair--as terza rima does.

Perhaps that sounds waaay too basic (and perhaps it is). But I know I've plenty of readers who've not had many chances to think about verse-craft.

Here're some rhyme triads from DSTM:

• numb:thrum:dumb
• space:place:grace
• oak:woke:smoke

I'm happy with these, but they all rely wholly on monosyllabic words. If all my rhymes only used one-syllable words, my lines would become less flexible. I would, in effect, have declared an extra constraint: 'a word-boundary must immediately precede the line's last beat'. That's dull!

Here're some other rhyme triads, which prevent that dullness and open up other patterns:

• dirge:surge:emerge
• displayed:made:persuade
• pretend:descend:rend
• underworld:pearled:hurled
• fly:thereby:occupy

These too count as blunt rhymes, not pendant rhymes. In each case, though, one or more rhymes sits on a syllable coming second or later in its word.

You can get away with doing this with syllables that don't bear primary lexical stress, like the '-py' of 'occupy'. But, at least for my taste, you can't do it with syllables adjacent to a word's primary lexical stress: you can't rhyme 'occupy' on the '-u-'. (Rhyme in song may have other rules: melody opens new doors.)

The poem's vocabulary shifts a bit thanks to this need for some multi-syllable rhyme words.

The need tilts my word choices a little more towards French- and Latin-derived words. Most of the English words with lexical stress falling conveniently on the second syllable have this kind of background: adjourn, resound, conceit, or despair.

Rising metres in English verse might owe some of their success to the proliferation of these sorts of high-status French-derived words with delayed lexical stress. You'll have an easier time filling out prototypical rising beat templates such as x/x/x/x/(x) or x/x/x/x/x/(x) if you use many words with this pattern.

English does have some English-origin words with an appropriate pattern: worthwhile, withstand, or foreseen, for instance. So I deploy some of those!

An example like foreseen also shows how you can semi-coin more handy words by shoving prepositions onto the fronts of other words: you can get away with something like forth-stride, say, or down-thrown. Probably. This sort of productive use of prepositions as suffixes on verbs seems to have been more common in Old English and Middle English than it is today.

Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright leaned more on these preposition-suffixes, because it emphasised English-original words more than DSTM. I have tried to write DSTM in what I think of as middle style, which permits more loanwords.

Finally: here's a neat rhyme trick.

English verse, like some other traditions, has tended to avoid rhyming a word with itself pure and simple--what I would call pure autorhyme.

You can, though, still rhyme a word with a homophone different in meaning: punning rhyme. At least in Middle English verse, people seem to have liked punning rhyme, probably under the influence of French.¹

Here's a punning rhyme from DSTM:

• lulled:sculled:skulled

And here's something that at least dances on the edge of punning rhyme:

• mirth:unearth:on earth

Strictly speaking, 'on' isn't part of the rhyme here, but I include it because it matters: its presence in the relevant line moves the sound even closer to 'unearth' even though the meaning differs.

All this may be showy, the sort of thing at tyro does. I am only a tyro when it comes to verse, certainly. I think it's at least interesting, though. And I also think rhyme in English should sometimes be showy. It is hard to do!

My previous post in this series discussed how I join alliterative verse up to surrounding terza rima structures.