One too many drinks

and methinks

I be a world renowned poet

just no one else knows it.

The metrics of rhyme are many. You, the writer, get to decide what your goal is. Don’t give up before you’ve ended your piece. On a similar note, don’t force it either. Wait, what does that mean?

First of all, what do you mean by rhyme? In elementary school, reading and language is taught by coming up with all the words that end with {insert letter series here}. For example, -ot. We get hot, pot, cot, dot, lot, not, rot, tot. The last two letters make the same sound for all of those words. This end rhyme is what we most often think of.

Masculine rhyme is that created by a stressed syllable. The above -ot series would be considered a masculine rhyme. Because those endings are single syllables, they are also considered stressed syllables.

Add -ing to the end of any of those words and you have a feminine rhyme. Dotting and rotting rhyme to a non-stressed syllable. Don’t blame me, I didn’t make the rules, but I do agree. Sounds a bit chauvinistic to call hard (or stressed) syllables masculine and weaker (non-stressed) syllables as feminine.

Stitch a series of syllables with similar consonant sounds and you have alliteration. I hope you see what I did there. The initial (typically stressed) sound is repeated in the first line of this paragraph. Digging into the dim well of duplicate beginnings will develop your word finding dexterity. Be careful, it also begins to be addicting!

Alliteration is also a form of consonance if it is using consonant sounds. Stretch that rhyme a bit and add some color with an additional consonant sound. Develop the consonance scene here in a dab of bad. In other words, moving the sounds around a bit in the words is acceptable.

If you are more visual, there is also something called eye rhyme. You get eye rhyme by ending your lines with word endings that are spelled the same, but sound differently. In our lovely English language, there are many words that follow this pattern. Think cow – know, but – put, or maybe protein – vein.

I’ve written visual poetry. My preference is for shapes that appear in the balance of the words. Trickling down the page for rain or similar visual cues to the feeling in the words. Visual rhyme seems a bit counter intuitive to me. If I am writing in rhyme, it tends to be auditory.

Check in with Nick Ramsey and his hip-hop friends for more examples. As you build rhyme muscle your words begin to flow becoming the musicality of poetry. When teaching middle school students, I liked to use current songs. Using the currency of “their” music to develop understanding helped build their relationship to the ideas.

If you would like to delve into more on rhyme, the Poetry Foundation has a wealth of information, activities, and examples. Unfortunately, their series of workshops on specific styles of poetry is coming to a close. This is a great loss to the poetry world. Check out their archives of great poets and poems.

If you would like to talk more about rhyme, check in with me. This week (Nov. 25) is the second to last session at Trek Bicycle Store Racine. On December 2 I will be back at Vintage & Modern Books.

December 2 is also my upcoming memoir workshop Rolling Forward. What activity brings you joy? That is all you need to bring (the idea) and I will help you pass that passion to the next generation. Join me at Vintage and Modern Books in Racine from 5 to 7pm on the 2^nd.

—Christy Hoff, ArtRoot Writer-in-Residence