P.S.
There's a typo in my reply to annie . . . a typo I didn't correct . . . but Roger must have noticed.

Thanks, Maryann. I know -- if I hope to bring my poems up to the "next level" -- that I have to be less content with finding any old rhyme that fits the meter and context and doesn't feel forced/rhyme driven. You've also given me good examples to study. I admit I've never spent a lot of time with Ogden Nash.

Interesting topic, Maryann.

Some of my fav rhymes come from Byron’s Don Juan, are here are a few:


But – oh ye lords of ladies intellectual!
Inform us truly, have they not henpecked you all?

Since in a way that’s rather of the oddest, he
Became divested of his native modesty.

Of beauties cool as an Italian convent,
Where all the passions have, alas! but one vent.

He loved his child and would have wept the loss of her,
But knew the cause no more than a philosopher.

However, the presence of unexpected and inventive rhymes is not in itself always the sign of great poetry, nor is the absence of such rhymes.

I have seen some readers mark otherwise good poems down in their estimation merely because the rhyme words – when isolated – are apparently quite dull and uninventive.

Here is a list of the rhyme words for one of my all-time favourite poems:

this,
is ;
thee,
be.
said
head ;
woo,
two ;
do.
spare,
are.
this
is.


How unexciting are these rhymes, from Donne’s “The Flea”.

Something painters discover early on is that there is no such thing as a bad colour. Just badly used colour. I think the same is true of rhyme. Context is all. Near rhyme, when used skilfully, greatly enlarges the available palette of rhyme and nuance available to the poet.
Playing with the mixture of sound and meaning is what gives so-called formal poetry its edge (in my view) over free verse.
Janet

John Whitworth takes a bit of beating in the rhyme game:
I Wish You Were a Wave of the Sea

Fretting my heart as you pedal your bicycle,
Perdita, once I called, Perdita, twice I called.
Pretty as paint and as cool as a icicle,
..... Perdita Simmons!

Shall I tell how we met under fortunate auspices?
Presuming a bottle of Spanish Don Horsepiss is
Fortunate... This is not one of my coarse pieces,
..... Perdita Simmons.

Syllables shimmy as sonnets assemble
Themselves in a shadowless summer a-tremble -
A ten-guinea ticket for Merton Commem Ball
..... With Perdita Simmons

Daddy's a saurian Cambridge historian.
Mummy's more chummy. She's tweedy and Tory and
Hunts and what-have-you. So very Victorian
..... Is Perdita Simmons.

Thus Mainwaring, tall dark and rich, with a glance as much
As to say, My dear boy, I don't fancy your chances much
I know Perdie of old, and she doesn't like dances much,
..... Doesn't Perdita Simmons.

Perdita's hair ruffles fairer and tanglier,
Perdita's grin makes my ganglia janglia,
Perdita's uncle owns half of East Anglia,
.....All for Perdita Simmons.

Mainwaring's plan is for getting a leg over;
Wait till she's plastered (the bastard!), then beg of her.
No go. (Ho-ho!) Now his face has got egg over.
..... From Perdita Simmons.

Oh, how spiffing! (She talks like a school-story serial,
While my lexical style is down-market and beery.) All
Love is insane and remote and ethereal
..... And Perdita Simmons.

As we're pounding the ground in a last hokey-cokey, dawn
Fingers two constables, hauling off chokey-borne
Mainwaring, pissed as a rat on the croquet lawn.
..... Sweet Perdita Simmons.

Half-asleep, climbing from Headington Hill, at the crest of it
Sickle moon, scatter of stars and the rest of it,
In my hand one small hand (and this is the best of it)
..... Of Perdita Simmons.

Perdita murmurs, You'll do for a poet.
And kisses me carefully twice, just to show it.
Nobody knows what love is. But I know it.
..... It's Perdita Simmons.

-- John Whitworth


And get a load of this
Here's a quote from a publishing note :Writing Poetry (A & C Black 2001 £9.99).

Does modern poetry have to be difficult? Can it rhyme? Do I need a degree in English Literature to write it and is it OK to be funny? John Whitworth answers these and a thousand other questions in this popular and much-praised how-to handbook now in its second (revised) edition.

AND MOST ESPECIALLY THIS INTERVIEW


[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited January 10, 2008).]

I agree with Janet. It's almost silly to evaluate a pair of rhyme words without evaluating the words that come in between them, and, if they are part of a longer syntactical unit, the entire unit. I'm not willing to do the hard counting work involved, but I'll bet if you went through the work of the "top" twenty poets writing rhyming poems in English, you'd find that at least 80% of the rhymes were used by at least 50% of the poets.

The purpose of a rhyme is not always to surprise, per se, though we don't want the reader to be anticipating the word so far in advance that it chimes off in his head before he gets there. We've all seen poems get praised by people saying that "when I first read it, I didn't even realize it rhymed," which shows, in those instances, that surprise was the last thing the reader was looking for.

But even predictable rhymes are not always a problem. A famous example concludes Frost's "Reluctance:

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

As Frost himself has pointed out, after "reason" there was only one possible rhyme left in the English language. The astute and verbal reader/poet would have sensed this fact and known that "season" was about to conclude the poem, but, I think, this fact does not dull the impact of the conclusion. What counts is how the rhymes are woven together, the thoughts and rhythms and associations that bind the rhyme in a way that goes beyond the fact that they have a certain sonic quality that we call "rhyme."

What's bad is not a familiar rhyme, per se, but familiar rhymes that are symptoms of familiar lines, familiar stanzas, familiar thoughts, and familiar poetry. You can blame the rhyme when you don't like the poem, but it's usually something that goes beyond the rhyme. To use Janet's painting analogy, don't blame the color red if someone uses it to do a bad painting of a rose.




[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited January 11, 2008).]

Janet, the linked poem and article are gold, or dynamite, or both if such a thing is possible! Thank you for them. I must come back and read the article more carefully; there's too much there to absorb at once. Whitworth is a colossal discovery.

Maryann

With apologies, I think this (lines 2 and 4) is the most brilliant rhyme in English poetry, from a poem by X. J. Kennedy:

Who will ride with Fergus now?
You lazy cocks and cunts,
I thought I'd ask you anyhow.
Well, don't all talk at once.

David, no apologies needed! It does have quite an impact. The force is partly from the grossness of the word, and partly because the words don't look like a rhyme.

And Roger, I think we cross-posted, as I just now saw your post. Those are good arguments and demonstrations. I like, and think I will be able to remember, the notion that what's bad is the rhyme that is a symptom of a too-familiar idea.

Editing back: I think I've neglected to say thanks to Patricia, Annie, and Mark. Patricia and Annie, I noticed another admirable Frost rhyme this morning, the "spaces/human race is" pairing in the last S of "Desert Places." Mark, that's a great insight about "The Flea."

What Bob said. Of course comic or satiric poetry lends itself much more readily to less familiar and even outrageous rhymes than does more “earnest” poetry, where surprise or laughter can work against what the poem is doing. And yes, I know that comic verse can be and often is serious, and that laughter is a powerful disarming strategy.

One of my longtime favorites is Guy Wetmore Carryl [1873-1904; died at 31], who recast many a legend, fable, fairy tale, and Mother Goose rhyme into rollicking and pun-punched verse. Here are the opening two stanzas (of ten + a moral) of one of his typical pieces:

How the Helpmate of Blue-Beard Made Free with a Door

A maiden from the Bosphorus,
With eyes as bright as phosphorus,
……Once wed the wealthy bailiff
………………Of the caliph
……………………Of Kelat.
Though diligent and zealous, he
Became a slave to jealousy.
……(Considering her beauty,
………………'T was his duty
……………………To be that!)

When business would necessitate
A journey, he would hesitate,
……But, fearing to disgust her,
………………He would trust her
……………………With his keys,
Remarking to her prayerfully:
"I beg you'll use them carefully.
……Don't look what I deposit
………………In that closet,
……………………If you please." . . .

And here is the conclusion of his take on "Little Red Riding Hood":

……If a swallow cannot make a summer
……It can bring on a summary fall!