What rhyme does
(to set the heart abuzz)
Dear friends,
Your spring thoughts last week were delicious: those who love the season, those who don’t, those who’ve changed their approach to it, those in other hemispheres … All magnificent. Thank you.
I have a friend who — when I tell him I’ve written a new poem — asks: “Does it rhyme?” He’s old school and can recite rhyming poems from memory 30 years after having learnt them off by heart. I tell him that my poetry often features internal rhyme, and he gives me a scoff that I find very funny.
End-line rhyming is just one of ways that music shows up in a poem; there can be alliteration, assonance, syllabic count, repetition, internal rhyme … Most poetries have a way of featuring musicality and rhythm, and in different times and in different places, those rhythms have been in or out of vogue. Rap and song lyrics often feature extraordinary rhyme. (Joni Mitchell rhymes “good omelettes and stews” with “my heart cried out for you” in “California”.)
Contemporary poetry isn’t always in the kind of rhyme we might have learnt in school. But I can list off a few poets who regularly write in formal rhyming sequence quite easily: Patience Agbabi, Mimi Khalvati, Don Paterson, Marilyn Nelson, Wendy Cope — all acclaimed poets whose interests sometimes are found in lines with the predictable ABAB or ABBA patterns that might have been part of your early education.
A rhyme can make a line lift. Think of Molly Bloom’s couplet about Leopold in Ulysses:
We’re a capital couple are Bloom and I He brightens the earth, I polish the sky.
To recite those lines almost always brings me an element of happiness — the pitter-patter of syllables, the rhyme of “I” and “sky”, and the luxurious liquid of the “l” after the plosive “B” leading us to the vowel-grounded sound of “Bloom”. Formally, only 4 of the 16 words are longer than a single syllable: “capital”, “couple”, “brightens”, and “polish”. (You could make an argument for the contraction of “We’re” too, but in the vernacular of speech, it probably veers to a one-syllable word, no? But then I look at “Bloom” and think of how it asks for an elongated music.) The single-syllable words provide a percussion that is counterpointed by the others, especially “capital couple” with its pleasing 3-2 beat and its sharp “c” alliteration.
I can think of other rhymes that give pleasure too; I recommend you give yourself the unabashed delight of watching a video of (my good friend, I’m biased, but I’m right to be) Patience Agbabi introduce her Canterbury Tales prologue in the voice of the innkeeper, or host, Harry Bailey in gorgeous couplets:
When my April showers me with kisses I could make her my missus or my mistress. Later, Patience has Harry Bailey say: May the best poet lose, as the saying goes. May the best poet muse be mainstaying those on the stage, on the page, on their subject: me and April, we’re The Rhyming Couplet.
It’s just over two minutes long, and you will be glad for the joy, and you’ll feel the audience’s infectious joy too. The full book, Telling Tales, is published by Canterbury Press and is bawdy, raucous brilliance (with plenty of need for warnings about saucy language).
What is a rhyme that you recall? It might be from a poem; some old family proverbs rhyme too. In honour of my formal-rhyme-loving friend, let’s keep the rhymes fairly true. There’s a trilling half-rhyme in this: “He that lives wickedly / can hardly die honestly.”
It’s good to be talking with each other, friends. / It keeps the heart warm, while much else ends.
(see what I did there? there are rhymes in the air)
PS. If you’re in Manhattan this week, I’m giving a reading of new work on Thursday night at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery (see below). Come say hello!
Poetry in the World
A list of my events: Online and in the U.S. (Manhattan and Rhinebeck, NY; Notre Dame, IN; Santa Fe, NM) and Scotland (Iona)
Interfaith Alignment is collaborating with On Being and The Luce Foundation for an event in celebration of National Poetry Month. I’ll read poems on prayer and protest and hold a brief Q&A, beginning at 5 p.m. ET. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
Save the date for a special event to honor and support the work of St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery. I’ll be reading new poems from my next collection; join me there at 7 p.m. This event is in-person only, it won’t be recorded or Zoomed. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
I’ll be giving the keynote for a symposium at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
April 29, Cambridge, Massachusetts
I’ll be reading a few poems from Kitchen Hymns and joining Bishop Julia Whitworth for a conversation at Christ Church Cambridge, beginning at 6 p.m. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
For those of you in New York City: Join poet, playwright, and actress Amanda Quaid and myself for a live recording of Poetry Unbound In Conversation at The Morgan Library & Museum, beginning at 6 p.m. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
May 31–June 5, Rhinebeck, New York
This spring, I’m leading a six-day workshop at the Omega Institute. We’ll read and examine poems and also write and discuss our own. I’d love to see you there. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
June 27–July 3, Iona, Scotland
Krista and I will be leading a week of conversation (with some musical guests) on Iona, an island off an island off the west coast of Scotland. It is filled, but if you want to be on the wait list, you can email the Saint Columba hotel by clicking on the title just above here. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
August 9–13, Santa Fe, New Mexico
I’m leading a four-day intensive workshop at Modern Elder Academy called “Poetry as a Common Language”. We’ll read, write, and discuss poems on finding and deepening connection. (For more information, click on the date heading.)
I’ll be leading a virtual craft intensive on poetry and desire through Poets House, beginning at 6 p.m. ET. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
When we were young my very English father recorded 'Pooh Bear by Daddy' on a old cassette recorder ( you can hear the clunks as he starts and stops it).
One of Pooh's famous 'hums' is about the snow, 'The more it snows, tiddly pom, the more it goes, tiddly pom, the more it goes, tiddly pom, on snowing, and nobody knows, tiddly pom, how cold my toes, tiddly pom, how cold my toes, tiddly pom,are growing'.
Sophisticated, no. But funny and fun and accessible. Recitable on the move with laughter and bouncing and heavy landing (physically and verbally) on the rhymes. An early introduction to the joy of playing with words.
Every morning, coffee in hand, I stand at my living room window and recite a poem by Michael Glaser, "The Living Presence of Trees". It begins: "I have always felt the living presence of trees, the forest that calls to me as deeply as I breathe". Every morning this renews a direct link between trees and breathe. This amazing weaving of life.