In an earlier step, ‘Does a poem have to rhyme?’ (2.3), we learned that the question of whether or not to use rhyme has been disputed for hundreds of years. We gave the example of Ben Jonson’s seventeenth century poem, ‘A Fit of Rhyme against Rhyme’.[1] In this rhymed poem, Jonson criticises the use of rhyme, cursing the person who first conceived of the idea: ‘He that first invented thee, | May his joints tormented be, | Cramp’d forever.’ He is showing that while he can use rhyme effortlessly, he chooses not to. However, rhyme has been used so extensively in poetry over the course of history that for many people the words rhyme and poetry almost mean the same. 

​

Sound: 

Many people enjoy rhyme simply for the pure pleasure of the sound. Think for instance of nonsense rhymes or children’s poetry in which sound and the rhyming of sound is the main purpose, regardless of any meaning.

 

Structure: 

Rhyme can structure a stanza or an entire poem, linking lines and words which are sometimes far apart. In many poems this creates an interesting tension between the careful order of the poem’s form and for instance and the excessive emotion of its content.

 

Meaning: 

In the next step, we will see how rhyme can emphasize or even undermine the meaning of a poem, by bringing together rhyming pairs which complement, but also those which contradict one another.

 

Tradition:

A particular rhyme scheme engages with a long-standing poetic tradition, from the simple rhyming couplet to the sonnet.

 

Inspiration: 

Some poets feel that by forcing yourself to follow a rhyme scheme, you will come up with poems which are more likely to surprise you than if you used free verse. The challenge of adhering to a form accesses the unconscious part of your brain in a way that simply ‘writing what you think’ doesn’t.

​

Full Rhyme - Half Rhyme

​

Let’s begin with the idea of full rhyme:

example

pen
hen
ten
men
ken
Yen
fen
when
then
again

Read the example set out above. Because our theme is tools, I have begun the list of rhyme words with a poet’s tool. As you can see and hopefully hear from the example, in the case of full rhyme only the beginning of words differs. Of course in many cases a person’s accent changes things. One person’s full rhyme is another person’s half rhyme—but we’ll get to that in a minute!

Full rhyme can even extend across more than one syllable, as in paperand caper. And as long as the endings sound exactly the same, they are called full rhyme, even when spelled differently, (e.g. write and right). Half rhyme, on the other hand, looks like this:

pen
pan
pun
plain
porcelain
lend

Perhaps you can see or hear that while there are some similarities in sound, the sound is not the same. In the example (above), it is mostly the vowel that changes (e/a/i/o/u), and the consonants that remain the same (p and n). However, the idea of the half rhyme can be stretched quite far, and can be subject to debate.

​

Rhyme as Structure

​

Rhyme can be used to structure a stanza or an entire poem by repeating certain patterns. Letters are often used to indicate these patterns in the following way:

There once was a man who’d read
a book on making a shed.
When he tried to get in
he banged his shin
‘cause he’d built the thing on its head.

​

In this tool-themed poem, there are two sets of rhyming words. Can you see them? The first is ‘read’ and ‘shed’ in lines one and two, and the final word ‘head’ in the last line. Let’s call this group A. The second set are ‘in’ and ‘shin’ in lines three and four. Let’s call this group B. Now are they full or half rhyme?

They are full rhymes, chosen for their musical effect. In fact, the rhymes tell us a lot. If you aren’t familiar with the form, then the rhymes together with the rhythm and the content of the poem confirm that this is a limerick. In particular, it is the pattern of the rhyme that tells us this. If we write the letter A next to the rhyming words in group A and do the same for group B, it looks like this:

​

There once was a man who’d read         A
a book on making a shed.                      A
When he tried to get in                         B
he banged his shin                                 B
‘cause he’d built the thing on its head.   A

​

​