Dante rhymed like hell.
Most poets fear they cannot be dignified if they rhyme. But this fear is misplaced. It is based on a slipshod understanding of rhyme.
Yes, it is absolutely true that too much chiming can ruin rhyming. (Unless chiming is the object—see Poe’s “The Bells;” here the truism is brilliantly flipped: chiming is rhyming.)
In dignified circumstances, one simply needs to rhyme with less chime. Is this possible?
Can one have their cake and eat it? Sure. Eat (hide, suppress) the rhyme.
Rhyme coincides with rhythm. If this latter is not used well, none of what I’m saying now will be of any practical use. The poet must be cognizant of rhythm. If not, the rhyme will fail. Without a sense of rhythm, your rhyme will not only chime, but chime badly. You will not be a Poe. You will be poo.
The modern poet instinctively knows this. For the sake of dignity, they prefer to never rhyme and never allow rhythm to be of any particular importance, except in rare instances when, in a happy accident, it graces their natural speech.
Rhythm is, in many ways, like rhyme sleep-walking. It can be said that rhythm is unconscious rhyming. Applying rhyme, the poetic rhythm is forced to wake up and gaze upon itself in the mirror. Absent rhyme, the reader of free verse is generally asleep to the poetry, like a sleepwalker navigating a hallway or a set of stairs.
They say it is far easier to rhyme in Italian than English; Dante had an advantage over Milton because he was able to draw more naturally on a greater pool of similar sound-endings, merely due to the physical properties of the language in which he was fluent.
Does rhyming in English force one to sound narrow, artificial, and flowery, given the simple fact that the material construction of English, fed by a number of linguistic streams, requires the poet to twist and bend too much?
This has been the feeling and the feeling has hardened into thinking—but I have stumbled on a way to rhyme in English, not in a flowery manner, but rather a weedy one. English has abundant rhyming possibilities, modest, and tasteful rhyming possibilities, if you know where to look. You only need to have a sense of rhythm, “something to say,” and a deep, abiding faith that rhyme belongs with Diane Seuss as much as it does Dr. Seuss.
A FB reader made the following comment on my recently published poem on Scarriet, “Try.” I shared my poem on a poetry site called “Poetic Lie Sense,” and Tom Cleary (whom I don’t know) opined:
“I love the internal rhyming which serves, in a sense, to entwine the lies of the actor with admirers.”
How could I not fall in love with such a comment! (It inspired this essay.)
Internal rhyming is a solution, for some, to the “end-rhymes-are-jarring-and-distasteful” dilemma. I use internal rhyming, as well. But as I quote my poem which caught the eye of Mr. Cleary, note the rhyming practice I use in the beginning of the poem. Here is the reason for my essay. These rhymes are not flowers, but weeds. They are everywhere in English. I mean rhymes like “poetry/rivalry.” This type of rhyming is far different from the “June/moon” variety, of which readers are more familiar (and which I don’t fear, either.) And now let me share my poem, first published on Scarriet a couple of days ago:
TRY
The actor is happy—because he wants to be.
I imitate ancient poetry insincerely, yet happily.
When I act, you get more of me—
shadowy hero and who I am really.
If you object to this,
you’ll never experience a genuine kiss.
Mad on purpose is truly mad.
Sad, the miserable isn’t really sad.
Let the actor lie next to you.
You’ll be so in love, you won’t know what to do.
But later, when you see it was all an act,
you’ll doubt bitterly every famous fact.
Like a ballerina posing, you will sleep well,
imposing on your pillow—Eurydice in hell.
But the ballerina will age, she will die.
Make death an act. Go ahead. Try.
The speaker/actor of the poem is an unreliable narrator—“rhyming which serves…to entwine the lies of the actor with admirers”—and this, too, I imagine, makes the rhyming in the poem more palatable to the dignified ears of the moderns.
Today, in certain circles, we equate rhyming with idiocy.
Donald Trump recently mocked the current Vice President, saying, “she rhymes,” referring to remarks she made in which she ostentatiously and giddily praised electric school busses. Looking at the tape, she doesn’t actually rhyme, but the insult, a sophisticated one, is nonetheless understood.
A woman who rhymes is an idiot, according to a man. To a certain extent, the man in this case is correct—it must be admitted that the VP is a bit ridiculous and summing up her expertise with, “she rhymes,” is a brilliant stroke. But more needs to be said. Men are far more likely to be stupid due to over-education (or institutional succumbing) than a woman. A man can be a nice guy, very civilized, and yet be completely stupid. Not so the woman, who is superior to the man in this. She is stupid only when she is immoral.
Salem, MA 11/11/23