rhyme question
 

Is there a technical term--and any sharp descriptive terms or observations upon the effect while we're at it--for a clear assonant rhyme with no closing consonant, such as "blue" and "new"?

I have no idea, John, but I know a man who will. He's not on the Sphere so I'll send a message by other means, "asking, for a friend" so to speak. I'll let you know what he says.

Meanwhile, I was experimenting with making the sounds you specified and came up with the adjective "sphinctral". Best not go there, though. Think of Athene and the Aulos and what happened when she caught sight of her flute-face. Marsyas...

I'll ask Nigel. It's for the best.

Yes, poor Marsyas. He had the best intentions.
The French would be happy calling this a rime pauvre. Here's some French person on the internet:

La richesse des rimes (on dit parfois de manière plus ambiguë la qualité) : elle est déterminée par le nombre de sons communs.
rime pauvre = 1 son commun (dernière voyelle tonique seule). Ex. : aussi / lit = masculine pauvre - vie / remplie = féminine pauvre
rime suffisante = 2 sons communs (la dernière voyelle tonique + une consonne prononcée derrière ou devant ou + une autre voyelle devant). Ex. animal/chacal - horizon/maison - nuées/huées...
rime riche = 3 sons communs (rime suffisante + un autre son devant). Ex. cancre/ancre - prêteuse/emprunteuse...(tiré du Wikipédia)

Cheers,
John

John,

Thanks for sharing. Very informative.

Yes, thank you John. The man I intended asking is in Ireland for the whole of August. I'd like to know too as I'd just have taken it as a true rhyme and the original post has me wondering.

rime riche = 3 sons communs (rime suffisante + un autre son devant). Ex. cancre/ancre - prêteuse/emprunteuse...(tiré du Wikipédia)


I don't get it. How are there 'three common sounds' here? And in the second example, what rhyme is there except '...teuse'?

I think, in English:

rime pauvre: blue/true; gray/bay. The vowel is the one sound in common.

rime suffisante: taught/bought; cool/pool. The vowel and the concluding consonant are in common. Those are the two.

rime riche: pool/whirlpool; plant/implant: the initial consonant, the vowel, and the concluding consonant of the rhyme are all in common.

So t / eu / se is common in prêteuse/emprunteuse making it rime riche.

rime riche: pool/whirlpool; plant/implant: the initial consonant, the vowel, and the concluding consonant of the rhyme are all in common.

The poor French must be easily satisfied, then. What they call 'rime riche' is what we would disparage as 'identity rhymes'.

Brian: "The poor French must be easily satisfied, then. What they call 'rime riche' is what we would disparage as 'identity rhymes'."
This is exactly right. It's a thing Anglo-Saxons run into when reading or critting French or francophone poetry. The ear, which is culturally trainable, does eventually adjust. OTOH, French traditionally requires the alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes, which is a bit of a challenge. I'd love to share some of my French poetry on the Sphere but it doesn't seem quite appropriate. Oh well...

Cheers,
John

John

I'm working my way through French for Reading (about 60% done), which I think is an excellent book, in hopes that I can read my favorite French poets with more ease. I had, in the past, been able to, with some ease, read Le Monde and Le Figaro, but I lapsed a bit and am being more concerted in my efforts now.

Any really good French poets you like that might be pretty accessible? Again, I love and know fairly well French poetry (in English) from Nerval to, lets say Valery. So they're really my target at the moment, but if there are very good poets who are easier before or after, I'd love to start reading them alongside my more formal, academic reading.

Hi Andrew,

And thanks for the interesting question! So, some of my favorite French poets are:
C20th: Guillaume Apollinaire (picture poems), Francis Ponge (prose poems), Jacques Prevert (poems often set to music). Prevert would be the easiest.
C19th: Charles Baudelaire (my HS text), Victor Hugo (wrote huge amounts), Arthur Rimbaud (the boy genius), Gerard de Nerval (wrote much less verse).
C18th: people skip (Voltaire).
C17th: Jean de La Fontaine (fables - French schoolkids learn these); the dramatists.
C16th: Pierre de Ronsard, Jean Du Bellay (the Pleiade), Louise Labe (a great woman poet).
C15th: Francois Villon (outlaw poet).

I'd add the C12th Marie de France but that's Old French and unreadable without training. My students read her, Rimbaud, and Apollinaire in English.

Happy reading!
John

How did I forget Apollonaire.

To clarify, you're suggesting that a pretty solid intermediate reader could tackle any of these?

I teach Marie de France (translation, of course) in my Brit Lit class. She's Anglo-Norman, so I think she counts. Also, I find her dealing with gender interesting when compared with, say, Chaucer.

This is a great list (all of whom I've heard of, almost all 19th-20th century I've read), but if you were to pick among these poets to give, say, a recommendation to an intermediate student, which would you pick?

Hi Andrew, how about Renée Vivien? Here's a terrific new translation that uses Vivien's meter and rhyme. Full disclosure: I, as Headmistress Press, published the book.

It's in my cart, Mary! If you recommend, I know it must be good. Also, on Twitter, I spent time sharing French poems I loved when I was in France this summer, and realized it was shameful how few French women poets I knew. I came across Marceline Desbordes-Valmore through Anna Evans (and Rosanna Warren) and that was it. Seriously, embarrassing.

Frances Jammes.

A rhyme made of an open syllable (no closing consonantal sound) is simply open syllable rhyme or open rhyme.

What would be the point of making this specification in poetry though?

Desbordes-Valmore is perfectly good, and I'm glad to hear you teach Marie de France, she's great. In the two-volume C20th French poetry anthology on my shelves (Gallimard), the following women poets get a poem each:

i
Anna de Noailles
Marie Noel
Catherine Pozzi
ii
Rina Lasnier
Anne Hebert
Andree Chedid
Anne Perrier
Liliane Wouters
Marie-Claire Bancquart
Venus Khoury-Ghata
Anne-Marie Albiach
Marie Etienne
Gabrielle Althen
Michelle Grangaud

You'll notice more women poets make Volume II. This remains (in II) roughly 1/10 of the male poets listed. My Ph.D. was on a French woman author and I can speak from personal experience to the uphill climb facing women authors in France to this day.

Cheers,
John

Update: which makes it cool, Mary, that you are publishing French women poets in English.

Andrew, you ask which of my list an intermediate reader could tackle in French. Here's a shortlist.

C20th: Jacques Prevert, "Dejeuner du matin" and "Barbara."
C19th: Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal (I read him in HS).
Victor Hugo, "Demain des l'aube" (about the daughter he lost).
Arthur Rimbaud (the short poems and maybe Illuminations).
Gerard de Nerval, Les Chimeres (very short).
Marceline Desbordes_Valmore, "Les Roses de Saadi."
C17th: Jean de La Fontaine (the fables - French schoolkids learn these).
C16th: Pierre de Ronsard, "Comme on voit sur la branche...".
Jean Du Bellay, "O voyageur...", "Heureux qui comme Ulysse..."
Louise Labe (more sonnets)
C15th: Francois Villon, "Ballade des pendus."

I think this short list is readable for an intermediate reader, and available online. Though I did give you Les Fleurs du Mal, my high school French text. You could also branch out with Rimbaud's Illuminations and some famous La Fontaine fables. :-)

Cheers,
John

To be fair, there are a few extra rules thrown in. In prior centuries, French identity rhymes were not allowed to be the same part of speech, because that was deemed too lazy. So poets could identity-rhyme a verb with a noun, or a verb with an adjective, but not two verbs with each other.

Thanks Nemo and John.

John, what's the text you use?

All texts for my Intro to French Lit class are online, so I just use the rather ancient Marie de France version the internet offers. It's a bit of a struggle for the students, but her genius comes through. On my shelves is the Penguin Classics prose rendering, which does a fair job of telling the tales.
Francis Jammes BTW - it's a guy.

Cheers,
John

Not a good idea...

Hi Ann,

I always appreciate your comments, all the more so when they remind me of the warning Caesar got on his way to assassination. Very mysterious!
It also reminds me of the great Edith Piaf song "N'y va pas Manuel." That one ends "Oh, Manuel." Because he went.

Cheers,
John

Update: here's the Piaf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_hBqxtSbY4

The warning was for me, I posted something silly. But it was worth it for a whiff of Piaf. Thank you.

Thanks for so many rich responses.
Th text I have in mind is the ending of Milton's "Lycidas"
and how it is that the poem ends, not like the click
of a box closing (so Yeats), but it opens, in rhyme,
in perspective, in the turn from grief to a future
of limitless possibilities. That open unconsonanted rhyme
is such a small thing there, but it is the genius of it too.

  Thus sang the uncouth swain to th'oaks and rills,
While the still morn went out with sandals grey;
He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropped into the western bay;
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.

Yup, that's genius for you. What an ear the greats have had! Thanks for pointing that detail out.

Cheers,
John