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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: How do you feel about non-perfect rhyme?
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
I'm a songwriter, not a poet (it might be interesting to open a thread about the difference between those). I often use non-perfect rhyme in my lyrics. For example, one of the latest songs I wrote in English has rhymes like lap/back, roar/forward, hit/click, ahead/spreading and life/times. They're called assonance rhymes and things like that. Non-perfect rhymes can be a bit jarring at times, but the content of my song is jarring, so it can be a good fit.
What do you think?
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
Well, I like all types of rhyme, it sort of makes the words chewy. (Well, except eye rhyme, don't really see the point of that.)
But in song I find imperfect end rhyme somewhat annoying. I'd rather see the writer have the confidence not to rhyme - and use other musical qualities of the language.
Similarly, I find the idea of songs in made up languages annoying. As if the composer lacked the motivation to try. The constraints of a form are supposed to stimulate creativity.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I generally don't like rhyme, but I do like non-perfect rhyme, or as I've called it, half-rhyme. Hopkins and Yeats used it, and later poets.
Also used a lot in hip-hop, and I like this a lot, as it gives it a certain feel which is hard to define, edgy I suppose, discordant.
"though we live dangerous,
cops could just arrest me, blaming us, we're held like hostages." (Nas).
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
Yes, half-rhyme is a good term for it. It is this edgy, jarring feeling I'm going for sometimes. But I agree that avoiding rhyme can be creative too, I guess it depends on what you're trying to achieve.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
There are many forms, but I think having to sing lines changes what will work in end of line rhyme.
And then there are the issues thrown up by accent.
[ 24. July 2014, 14:50: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I used to hate rhyme, but people like Robert Lowell turned me back on to it, as he can use it in a modern idiom, without sounding like Tennyson.
It must have been a Friday. I could hear
The top-floor typist's thunder and the beer
That you had brought in cases hurt my head;
I'd sent the pillows flying from my bed,
I hugged my knees together and I gasped.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Rhyme, perfect or not, is in its usage. At least for me. In other words, it is the skill/talent of the writer in use of form, rather than the form itself which I find pleasing. Or not.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Sheer genius, but the rhyme here works to organize material that is threatening to become chaotic and over-whelming.
Tamed by Miltown, we lie on Mother's bed;
the rising sun in war paint dyes us red;
in broad daylight her gilded bed-posts shine,
abandoned, almost Dionysian.
At last the trees are green on Marlborough Street,
blossoms on our magnolia ignite
the morning with their murderous five day's white.
(Man & Wife, Lowell)
[ETA Link to full poem, DT, VW Host]
[ 24. July 2014, 15:15: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
I agree with lilBuddha. A half-rhyme should never be a cop-out because you couldn't find a perfect rhyme. I feel it should be used to create a certain effect, as a reflection of the talent of the writer.
There are a lot of good songwriters who use nonperfect end rhymes of course. Some time ago I was looking up a couple of examples from Paul Simon, I'll see if I can still find them.
(ETA: Aaargh! I see now that I should have made the title of this thread self-referential. 'A place to whine about non-perfect rhyme' or something like that. Why do I always think of these things later?)
[ 24. July 2014, 15:07: Message edited by: LeRoc ]
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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jrw
Shipmate
# 18045
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Posted
I don't think I have a problem at all with imperfect rhyme. It's certainly preferable to a perfect rhyme which is there simply because it's a perfect rhyme. An example would be 'Honey Pie' by The Beatles, an underrated song which is slightly spoilt by the rhyme:
Honey Pie, you are driving me crazy
I'm in love but I'm lazy.
There can't be many poets or lyricists (if any at all) who can always come up with a perfect rhyme which actually works though.
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plug plug
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
The funny thing is: I use imperfect rhyme rather often when writing in English, but would hesitate to do so in Dutch. Is it a language thing? Or am I more free in a language which isn't my own?
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
My kids can't be the first to be amused by Wesley (in his own language) using
quote:
late in time behold him come
offspring of a virgin's...wum
They're (6 & 9 yrs) irritated by it - either 'DAD, that doesn't really rhyme!' (in this case) or 'DAD, that word is only there because it makes the rhyme work' (as the Beatles example above).
I guess they're sensitive to it, because they really feel those temptations when making up their own 'verse', which they love doing.
Older kid says to me (in amused, naughty whisper) 'Dad, I could make that rhyme work a whole lot better...' ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
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Amos
Shipmate
# 44
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Posted
'Moon' and 'Jane' are half-rhymes (as used by Wilfred Owen et al). The consonant sound is the same, but the vowel differs. This isn't the same as rhyming with a similar vowel sound and a changed consonant--'Moon' and 'Boom' for instance, or 'time' and 'mine'. For some, this isn't rhyme at all, of course, and sounds like a knife scraping a china plate. But for people who use it, it really needs another name than 'half-rhyme' which already has a clear prosodic definition.
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At the end of the day we face our Maker alongside Jesus--ken
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Amos: But for people who use it, it really needs another name than 'half-rhyme' which already has a clear prosodic definition.
I've heard the term 'family rhyme' used for Moon/boom and time/mine. This is because n and m belong to the same consonant family (the nasals).
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I suppose you can just specify whether you have repeating vowels or consonants (consonance?). Alliteration is a special kind of consonance.
You do see 'slant rhyme' for vowel only rhyming, e.g. 'clap/lad'.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by jrw:
I don't think I have a problem at all with imperfect rhyme. It's certainly preferable to a perfect rhyme which is there simply because it's a perfect rhyme. An example would be 'Honey Pie' by The Beatles, an underrated song which is slightly spoilt by the rhyme:
Honey Pie, you are driving me crazy
I'm in love but I'm lazy.
There can't be many poets or lyricists (if any at all) who can always come up with a perfect rhyme which actually works though.
Rhyming in pop music can become quite irritating, when it is predictable. But then Dylan Thomas seemed to consult a rhyming dictionary with some poems, and you can tell! I mean, that it can become a kind of series of nervous tics, e.g.
These boys of light are curdlers in their folly,
Sour the boiling honey;
The jacks of frost they finger in the hives;
There in the sun the frigid threads
Of doubt and dark they feed their nerves;
The signal moon is zero in their voids.
(I see the boys of summer)
I suppose this is one of his wanking poems?
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Here is a combined parody of Dylan Thomas and G. M. Hopkins. Phew, I need a double Scotch now.
Hard the yards the boys trod in their overturning
Of the apple harvest; oh, for long, they lingered and lunged
To the forest-top-sail of their youth; and the maidens
Hoarded their cries and cracked laughter, that sailed like galleons
To the moon. Soft sift in the half-shore
Were the boys at their wired work, and now no longer
Do Dai the milk and Angie the taxi
Fly through the floes and throes of their griefs
And I am hard stripped and stoop to my loom in the womb-of-all
Home, that is Wales.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Ah, but you've earned that Scotch now.
This is maybe broadening the topic a bit, but I've been worriting about syllabic and free verse. Heaven knows, I've committed enough of it in my time - and am now reacting against it as lazy, inexact, shallow.
But I have an uneasy feeling that assonance and alliteration and accent and half rhyme have all to be worked in there somehow.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
It's rhythm that I notice now. Even that lovely Auden piece from 'Lullaby' for me has some odd stresses, but I guess I'm being pernickety. For me, the phrases 'individual beauty' and 'the entirely beautiful' sort of crash in like a car crash. But I think that was the idiom of the time, whereas I really prefer Lowell's smoothness, 'the rising sun in war paint dyes us red', lovely, yet also semi-psychotic.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
quote:
How do you feel about non-perfect rhyme?
With that I have few issues; I am fine.
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I try to be self-deprecating; I'm just not very good at it.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheAlethiophile
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
Hmm, I feel a pastiche thread coming on.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
It's rhythm that I notice now.
Rhythm! Free verse, caged verse; it is the rhythm that matters. Rhyme makes you tap your foot, rhythm makes you swing your hips. Disco vs funk.
It it the rhythm that pulls you along, Helter-Skelter scramble or slow, perambulating walk; it is the rhythm which defines the poet. Any dictionaried fool may rhyme, nod your head in metronomic iteration; but the poet makes you snake your spine in polyrhythmic syncopation.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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agingjb
Shipmate
# 16555
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Posted
Shouldn't light verse, as distinct from poetry or epigram, demand more exact rhyme and scansion.
Then again, is there a useful distinction to be made between light verse, poetry and epigram?
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Refraction Villanelles
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
Steve Knightley of Show of Hands:
My old man is eighty-four.
His generation won the war.
He left the farm forever when
They only kept on one in ten.
Landed gentry, county snobs,
Where were you when they lost their jobs?
Noone marched or paid the price
To save a way of country life.
Put to the tune, and sung, you don't notice that the last rhyme is imperfect. It does what deep rhyme does: it intimates that the second line is the natural consequence of the first.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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