[Tim Love]

An article in today's Guardian: " I would suggest two particular effects of rhyme: rhyme makes experience from within the body and so can produce unreasoned intimacy; rhyme destabilises the hierarchies of sense and so lends itself to radicalism" -
http://books.guardian.co.uk/poetry/f...989179,00.html

[Robert J. Clawson]

Jessie Jackson used rhyme to make himself a force in U.S. presidential primaries.

"Slam" poets have established their claim on "spoken poetry," which normally rhymes, and often includes multisyllabic rhymes.

Poets with lively ears ring internal rhymes unconsciously. It's definitely a "body" thing.

Bob

[Lee Harlin Bahan]

Um, if rhyme "destabilises the hierarchies of sense," then what does slant rhyme do? I mean, I can predict nine out of ten full rhymes coming at me.

Cheers,
Lee

[Richard Wakefield]

I'll have to read and ponder that business about the hierarchies of sense -- hadn't really thought there were any such hierarchies. It's a fine phrase, though, and could even point to something. Likewise "unreasoned intimacy." I'll have to see if I can think of any examples of reasoned intimacy.
Supposedly Auden would ask aspiring poets why they cared about poetry, then dismissed those who proclaimed they felt they just had SO MUCH to say but pursued the conversation with those who said they liked fooling around with words. To fool around with words can mean to explore their various facets of sensuality: sound, texture, connotation. It means to examine words for how they feel, maybe for how they trigger feelings, emotions. Rhyme can highlight some of that feeling.
Richard

[Janet Kenny]

To me it seems so obvious. I can't believe that anyone needs to talk about it. We're doing it and always have done and to look too closely is to trip up the essential spontaneous musicality which is directed by all our senses, whether rhyme is used or not. It's really sad that the question was ever asked. We use what we need.

I can predict most good music but it's still good music.

How good of "them" to let us use rhyme.

Such discussions remind me of a boy I used to know who gestured towards his father's study saying: Some pompous old bastards are in there deciding my future.

[Lee Harlin Bahan]

Whoa--I fear, Janet, that our meanings are sliding past each other and that disturbs me. To me a hierarchy is a fairly rigid ordering, so if you destabilize the hierarchy, it becomes less rigid, shaky. Having to use full rhymes feels pretty rigid to me. Things that are unstable are unpredictable, but I can, as I said, predict most rhymes before they arrive, which to me makes slant rhymes attractive, and more likely in English to create the "wildness" that Tony Barnstone discusses in his new Cortland Review essay (Maryann provided a link on Jarman-Barnstone thread at Mastery). I think that "wildness" is what Beer means, but Barnstone explains it better. I concede your point about music. What it boils down to is that I was making a joke, something on the order of negating a negative (if rhyme destabilizes, then slant rhyme stabilizes?) which apparently fell flat. Have I completely misunderstood you?

Best,
Lee

[Janet Kenny]

Lee,
I was also joking and I knew/hoped you were too.

I think the article is pretty good on the whole. But as someone who writes both rhyming and unrhyming poetry I am bored witless by the need to plead the case for rhyme. It's similar to the discussions about the diatonic musical scale that I endured in the 1960s and 70s.

We are balanced animals with two legs and two ears and we like octaves/rhymes. We feel less tense if we are allowed to hear judiciously placed rhymes and there is a great delight in finding the surprising rhyme or avoiding the too obvious rhyme or using the completely obvious one when it is also the perfect choice for a poem. That takes real courage.

I rarely find the literary talents of free versers live up to their pretensions. I often find better "poetry" embedded in the work of novelists.

Rhyme is a natural instinct and it's becoming a furtive pleasure.
best,

Janet

[Lee Harlin Bahan]

Whew, thanks, Janet, the world has stopped tilting. I thought we pretty much agreed on things, and am relieved to find that we indeed do. Your third paragraph immediately above is beautifully put.

Best,
Lee

[Tim Love]

Though Gillian Beer's a Cambridge Prof, she doesn't do Lit Theory rants. I think it's good that such an article appears in mass circulation newspapers. Her points aren't new, but many people will have a chance to read them for the first time.