Rhyme is one of the greatest gifts that is bestowed on us by language. Everyone can admire the beauty of rhyme. When done well, it edifies works. Imagine Dr. Seuss' tales without rhymes. One fish, two fish, red fish, indigo fish. They would not even be worth reading. Yet many people tend to shy away from this incredible literary device because they find it threatening or too difficult. While rhyming in poetry can be a difficult task, practicing it will increase your strengths as a writer.
Rhyme is based on similiar sounds at the end of words. Sounds recognized as a rhyming generally have identical vowel sounds and ending consonants. Sometimes rhyming words do not have consonants at the end of them, in which case the vowel sounds are identical. "Band" rhymes with "hand" because they both have the same vowel sound and ending consonants. (N.B. just because words have the same vowel does no mean they have the same vowel sound. Vowels can be pronounced many different ways.)
When we decide to use rhyme in a poem, it is best to decide what we want our poem to be about. We will use as an example William Blake's poem "Infant Sorrow".
My mother groaned, my father wept,
Into the dangerous world I leapt;
Helpless, naked, piping loud,
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
Struggling in my father's hands,
Striving against my swaddling bands,
Bound and weary, I thought best
To sulk upon my mother's breast.
Blake's concept here is very simple. He is describing a baby's birth. It is fascinating because he takes it from the child's perspective, and in a moment generally considered joyful, the child is afraid, cold, and sad.
The rhyme in Blake's poem is exemplary not because it is intricate, but because it is simple, consistent, and edifying. The rhyme scheme here is AABB, meaning that the first two lines rhyme with each other, followed by another rhyming pair. (Rhyming lines that follow eac other in sequence are called couplets.) We will take this oppurtunity to discuss rhyme scheme. Rhyme in poetry most commonly takes the form of rhyme scheme. this is the basic structure that the rhyme comes into. We generally notate a rhyme scheme by lettering rhyming lines identically, and we differentiate non-rhyming lines with different letters.
The rhyme scheme is entirely up to you. Since many writers prefer/tend to write in quatrains, common rhyme schemes include ABAB, ABBA (not the Swedish pop group), AAAB, or any other such combination. But you may have more than four lines in a verse. If you had five, six, or twenty-seven, the rhyme scheme would change. The rhyme scheme can also change from verse to verse. It is not reccomended that you do this unless you have some reason for changing the rhyme scheme.
Of course, your poem does not need a rhyme scheme to rhyme. You can rhyme lines as you will. You also can utilize internal rhyme. Such rhyme is found even in free verse. Usually in internal rhyme, words are rhymed within one line, such as "My fat cat was quite awake/When I poured his cream." 'Awake' and 'cream' do not rhyme, but fat cat does. Obviously, this is a ridiculous example, but it demonstrates the fact that not all rhyme comes at the ends of lines.
Forcing rhymes is probably the most common mistake in rhyming. It is also the most confusing to fix in revision. Forcing a rhyme usually means that the words that rhyme are more suited in the poem for the their rhyming sound than their actual meaning. (For examples, browse the literary forums and look for repeated comments on a poem about forced writing. For obvious reasons, I cannot use someone's poem as forced rhyme.) Let's make up a bad rhyme.
The images ran through his mind
But these images were not kind
So he always wished he was blind.
The document still needed to be signed.
Mind, kind, and blind, and signed are all perfect rhymes, meaning they fit all the rules for rhyming words (see above). But there is something wrong with these lines. First of all, it is awkward to read. The reason for this is mainly because the meter of the poem is off. The natural flow of the poem is not there. Often this is due to a differeing number of syllables in a poem. But this is not always the case. It also is a result of the accentuation of the words. Rather than going into a lengthy explanation of this, the trick is to read it aloud, or better yet, to have someone else read it aloud. If the person finds it awkward to read, then you need to adjust the words so that it is easier to read.
So what does this have to do with rhyming? When you begin to rhyme, you have to keep in mind the objective of your poem. You may have a specific idea of what your poem is about. In the above poem, it is difficult to decipher the meaning. Probably because the meaning has been sacrificed for the rhymes. It needs to always be the other way around. As a poet, you have to always remember the difference between literary devices and actual literature, or in this case poetry. Rhyming is just a device. To use it effectively, you must conform the rhyme to the poem, not the other way around. This means sacrificing your rhymes. Even after you find two lines which might rhyme, you might have to change them in your revision. Many poets are reluctant to do this, because that means restructuring the entire poem.
Yes. If you want to rhyme, you must be willing to put in the time. To some people, rhyming will come naturally, and in one or two drafts, they will have a great poem with awesome rhymes. But this is not the case with most people. You must sit and work at your poem for a long time. Here are some tips for perfecting your rhymes.
1. End lines with common words. If you try to rhyme something with "uniform", you're gonna have to start writing about "cuneiform". No one wants to read about school girls writing in ancient Mesopotamia. (Or Maybe they do.) TO make it easier on yourself, use simple words, or words that end with common sounds, like "-ation" or "-ment".
2. Read rhyming poetry. It's impossible to know what good rhyme and bad rhyme is until you read it. Read often and a lot. Then as you write your poem, compare the rhymes with those of your favorite rhyming poems. If you don't feel that the flow is natural, continue to work on your rhymes.
*More to come later*
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