[Roger Slater]

Oops. The topic is supposed to read "Can two secondary stresses rhyme with each other?"

Does "eternity" rhyme with "mortality" and "infinity" and "salary"?

I know that it's okay for a secondary accent in a word to bear the rhyme, and I have no problem hearing this when a secondarily accented syllable is set up against a primary accent (e.g., "eternity" and "be"), but I have trouble hearing any true rhyme when both rhyme words are asked to rhyme on their secondary stress. "Hypothesis" rhymes with "parenthesis"? To me, this kind of pairing doesn't ring in my head as a full-fledged "rhyme" and, at best, has a slant rhyme quality. To me, at least one of the paired words needs to rhyme on a primary stress in order to carry off a true rhyme sound for the both of them.

I don't think there's any general rule out there that supports what I'm saying, but I also don't think there are a lot of historical examples that contradict what I'm saying, either. But it's hard to evaluate historical examples, at least for me, since pronunciation has changed over the years, and also because (I believe) poetry used to be pronounced in a more stylized, artificial manner than natural speech as the reader of days gone by was more willing to alter pronunciation to accomodate the rhymes and stresses to make things come out just so.

But maybe my ear is simply aberrant and ill-trained in this regard. Do other people hear a pure, non-slant rhyme when they hear "infinity" and "eternity"? Isn't there some difference between this rhyme and book/look or infinity/be?



[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited January 06, 2002).]

[David Mason]

This is a good question. The Irish have a tradition of rhyming a seconary stress with a primary one. The effort of rhyming secondary stresses would seem to me to fall under a very broad category of off-rhymes--I'd have to look up the technical term for this particular rhyme because I can't remember it off the top of my head. For my own part, I think rules about rhyme are a bit like rules about meter, in that exceptions can usually be found for them. One is not supposed to put a trochaic substitution in the second foot, but plenty of poets do it without ruffling my feathers. In a certain context, the rhymes you mention might work perfectly well, and they might work even if we don't hear them as emphatically as we do others. But context is all--at least as far as I'm concerned. The absolute rule is usually helpful for a beginner, but a poet pushing the boundaries with skill might surprise us in any number of ways. I once heard Tim Murphy say that Yeats's "The Second Coming" was free verse, because he couldn't hear the pattern one usually associates with blank verse (that poem does not keep a consistent rhyme scheme going). I pointed out that one can scan the poem--that is, one can find five feet per line in it, though one has to make some very unruly substitutions in the process, not to mention imagining Yeats's pronunciations. Nevertheless, I'd have given my right leg to have written the poem, even though it baffles some prosodists. What other poem speaks to the aftermath of September 11th so well? Anyway, this metrical analogy occurs to me only because I'm very tired and not thinking of a good example of rhyme. Perhaps one will occur to me tomorrow, or perhaps someone else will jump into this fray.

Dave

[ChrisW]

I haven't David Mason's authority, but I'll second your feeling, Roger that the rhyming of two secondary stresses should count as off-rhyme -- and as a rather disappointing form of off-rhyme (though light rhyme like 'spring/promising' is, as you point out, perfectly good).
Identical rhymes like form/inform seem far cleverer than morbidly/infinity. Even the unstressed-to-stressed rhyme division/one strikes me as more interesting than morbidly/infinity. And all are considerably less interesting than a pararhyme like defile/fall.

As David says, that isn't to say that morbidly/infinity couldn't be used occasionally (even in a poem that is otherwise normatively rhymed).
But what about a villanelle that uses such rhymes throughout? -- Marilyn Hacker's collected poems contains such a villanelle, and when I read it, I have to say I felt very unsatisfied -- like someone who bites into a beautiful curry and finds that the spices have been watered down and replaced with food coloring.

[David Mason]

I don't claim any authority, and I've slept on this question and still not come up with a good example of rhyming secondary stresses....

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

Shakespeare was having some fun, I think--Compare the statements of L2 and L4 with his use of rhymes:

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth. Your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTSo, till the judgment that yourself arise,
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTYou live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

[Roger Slater]

Curtis, that's an excellent example of rhyming secondaries. I suppose just one example doesn't prove it's "acceptable," though, especially since you may be right to suggest (as I think you might be suggesting) that the "powerful rhyme" line was sort of a humorous context for Shakespeare to choose rhymes he actually thought were somewhat on the weak side.

I note, as well, that these "rhymes" are arguably not "rhymes" at all, but repetition, even leaving aside the secondary stress issue. Thus, masonry/memory and enmity/posterity each pair together final syllables that start with the same consonant sound. Since Shakespeare rarely (to my knowledge) uses repetition instead of rhyme, this would support the theory that these rhymes are purposely not "powerful rhymes." And yet, of course, it's a helluva poem.

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

Shakespeare broke nearly every dictum of his contemporaries' poetics. I would call this poem "performative," because it is doing what it is saying on several levels. Compare what he is doing with e.e.cummings' "pity this busy monster,manunkind."

Yes, the pairings masonry/memory and enmity/posterity are exact rhymes (repetition), but the rhymes masonry/enmity, memory/posterity, masonry/posterity, and memory/enmity are rhymes on secondary stresses.


--C.

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

And, Shakespeare could use three of the previously mentioned rhyming methods rather well:

Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck,
And yet methinks I have astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality.
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well
By oft predict that I in heaven find.
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert.
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTOr else of thee this I prognosticate:
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTThy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

Astronomy/quality are rhymes on secondary stresses,
art/convert are near-rhymes,
prognosticate/date is a secondary-primary rhyme.

Although, I wonder if "convert" was pronounced as "convart" in Shakespeare's time. Also, of course, this might be a "sight rhyme," such as prove/love which of course was used more in his time than in our time by formalists.

--Curtis.

[This message has been edited by Curtis Gale Weeks (edited January 07, 2002).]

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

And, here he uses disyllabic rhymes, including slants which cross over the final syllables:

Farewell! Thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate.
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing,
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gavest, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gavest it, else mistaking.
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgment making.
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTThus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTIn sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

There's that estimate/determinate....with the alterations of "t" "m" and inclusion of "n," as if in the second word he's moved the "t" back, moved the "m" before the "i" and included the "n". Hmmm.

It is interesting that in the final line, he's reverting to and comparing/contrasting sounds: "ing" in "king" which fills up most of the poem's rhyming, and "atter" in "matter" which compares with the "estimate/determinate" end-sounds; also, the first four lines are comparing these sounds by alternation.

misprision--"misunderstanding"



[This message has been edited by Curtis Gale Weeks (edited January 07, 2002).]

[Carol Taylor]

I think there's endless precedent for rhyming on the secondary stress syllable in iambic meter. Some of Roger's examples aren't actually rhyme but repetition of the secondary stress syllable: infinity and mortality, for example, in which ty is simply repeated. Others may actually rhyme on the primary stressed syllable, such as synthesis/parenthesis. And still others may be double rhymes: salary/mortality has full rhyme on both primary and secondary stressed syllables. But look at a few examples of words that rhyme solely on the secondary stressed syllable and tell me why the rhyme won't work?

exasperate, educate, hyphenate, fashionplate

protocol, parasol, alcohol, folderol

cornerstone, herringbone, cortisone, telephone

metaphor, commodore, heretofore, Baltimore

comatose, overdose, grandiose, cellulose

paragon, cinnamon, skeleton, ganglion

cavalcade, lemonade, centigrade, escapade

nightingale, fingernail, Chippendale, monorail

chemical, conjugal, colloquial, decimal, interval, personal

albatross, applesauce

And on and on and on forever. Like most generalizations, I'm afraid, it doesn't bear close examination.

Carol