What's wrong with rhyme?

[UnderYourSpell]

My rhyme does not rhyme,
but that is not a crime,
I'll get it right another time.

there.

bravo ........ applause

 

[JaxRhapsody]

If there happens to be rhyme in anything of mine
Garunteed it's hardly intentional, borderline coincidential
It's all fine if it ain't Dr. Suess. That's too elementary and unimteresting
Keep it slight or slanted, most, I guess closely.
Fine for prepubescence, but to me lacks substance.

Besides, I know American english is the most complicated and difficult to learn. With vowels long and short, accents and vernaculars. I don't take heed of someones accent or phonetic speaking nor how their accent effects speaking a foreign language. Outside of stories, worda are written in expectance of correct pronouncment. At leastin the language I speak- thus I lack a southern accent.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

When it gets to 10 degrees belowses
and you've trouble feeling your noses
Don't aim to go far,
when you can't find your car
'Cos digging it out drops 10 toeses!

 

[oggbashan]

I search for a suitable rhyme
My Muses say in accents fine,
'You're no sort of poet,
Your readers know it,
Write a story this time.'

 

[UnderYourSpell]

I search for a suitable rhyme
My Muses say in accents fine,
'You're no sort of poet,
Your readers know it,
Write a story this time.'

At stories you do very well
but without trying how do you tell?
Would be such a pity
that some dirty ditty
could rival our Eskimo Nell.

 

[oggbashan]

At stories you do very well
but without trying how do you tell?
Would be such a pity
that some dirty ditty
could rival our Eskimo Nell.

The Garderobe is perhaps my best:
Readers tend to ignore the rest
One lasted years without a vote
My conclusion, that I'll note:
My poetry doesn't stand the test.

 

[pelegrino]

Talking of dirty ditties,
They have the common touch,
They populate big cities,
And they're not hard to catch.

You live your dirty ditty,
And then you write the song,
Who cares if it is witty,
Or if it needs a thong?

 

[The Mutt]

Talking of dirty ditties,
They have the common touch,
They populate big cities,
And they're not hard to catch.

You live your dirty ditty,
And then you write the song,
Who cares if it is witty,
Or if it needs a thong?

Dude, how did you not work titty into this?

 

[pelegrino]

Listen to
this.
It's the finale of Rossini's ouverture from William Tell
and I have written lyrics for the main theme of it that go like this:

Tit-ty bang, Tit-ty bang, Tit-ty bang, bang, bang,
Tit-ty bang, Tit-ty bang, Tit-ty bang, bang, bang,
Tit-ty bang, Tit-ty bang, Tit-ty bang, bang, bang,
Tit-ty bang…………….ti- Tit-ty bang!

 

[Trixareforkids]

Listen to
this.
It's the finale of Rossini's ouverture from William Tell
and I have written lyrics for the main theme of it that go like this:

Tit-ty bang, Tit-ty bang, Tit-ty bang, bang, bang,
Tit-ty bang, Tit-ty bang, Tit-ty bang, bang, bang,
Tit-ty bang, Tit-ty bang, Tit-ty bang, bang, bang,
Tit-ty bang…………….ti- Tit-ty bang!

LOL!

Now I've got the cast of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang stuck in my head only they're nude and running and jumping to that music.

(yes, the inside of my head is a very strange and entertaining place)

 

[Equinoxe]

I realise that I'm responding to comments made months ago, and perhaps some of those who made them are no longer quite in the same place, but the subjects which arose are interesting to me.

I hope no one minds, because it will be unnecessarily long.

First, I have to agree with those who have taken the position that rhyme is a constraint, but that that's not necessarily a bad thing. I also agree with twelveoone about some people, particularly those not well versed in poetry (pun intended), perceiving rhyme as the definitive feature of poetry. Sad though that is.

There is nothing at all wrong with rhyme and it may add a wonderful lyrical element to a poem, but like any form or constraint it may be used to inspire greater creativity or it may be a great and undue limitation, an empty structure which the would-be poet is blindly and soullessly trying to fill. It is a constraint, but if it feels like a constraint, it may be a case of the latter.

... Annie, the Babel Tower is no joking matter. Different languages are much more than "word A translates to word B". When you look at a really different culture (e.g., the Chinese), you'll see that often there is no exact translation for some of their thoughts/concepts. You might need thousands of words to explain what a single word means, because it's an alien concept/idea, which does not exist here.

As for translation? I don't think that it is possible to accurately translate poetry from one language to another, whether that poetry rhymed or not. The poem has significant meaning in its original language. The nuances and allusions, and the assumptions made about the reader, don't translate.

This is very true. Something is always lost in translation and other things are gained—with the caveat that there is no value judgement necessarily implied by either term.

Which is especially problematic for me as all of my favourite poetry is in translation from Classical Chinese or Japanese—both of which are somewhat beyond the scope of my learning.

It varies just how much it is true, though. There is, of course, the general fact that a translation is never quite the same thing as the original, and hence in that sense true translation is impossible, but there are some things which are absolutely untranslatable in any sense. There's a famous couplet by Mirza Ghalib, for instance, that has 18 possible meanings in Urdu—there is absolutely no way to render that in another language in any meaningful sense, far beyond the general inability to capture everything in translation.

Moreover, there are sometimes structural features of languages and subsequently their poetry which have no real analogue in other languages. In Chinese poetry, for example, the jintishi form required specific use of the four tones of Middle Chinese. That formal structure is difficult to reimagine in English, not being tonal and having nothing quite equivalent—some translators might consider metre similarly, others might use assonance, others might avoid the question altogether.

A translation is itself a reading of the original—one of the infinite possible interpretations of a work; even when it is a 'good' translation which attempts to capture all of the possibilities inherent in the original, you are still getting the translators understanding of the work—and whatever accidents inherent in their wording are introduced.

And whatever the difficulties of translation overall, a poem is perhaps the most difficult thing to translate.

But if you can't read a work in the original, read as many translations as you can find.

There is nothing wrong with rhyme if you can do it right. Rhyme is a medieval invention. Poetry existed much before it and will exist after it if we decide to give up rhyme totally, but there is no reason to give it up, so long as we feel comfortable within its confines.

As far as European poetry is concerned anyway. Rhyme was most likely introduced from Arabic poetry in the Middle Ages.

But Chinese poetry has utilised rhyming since its earliest origins in the Shi Jing some 3000 years ago—not that you'd know it from the majority of English translations of Chinese poetry (and I've been known to prefer it that way, to be honest).

Incidentally, the question of why the Shi Jing didn't rhyme any more was historically a major impetus within China for the exploration of the development of the Chinese language.

I just found them there in the English language and I am trying to use the to the best of my ability, but I do think it strange (not necessarily bad) that in English the letter "u" has two distinct sounds, I don’t think it happens in any other European language. As for example in "nut", "number" and "Friar TucK" as opposed to "Zulu", or even a third in between option as in the word "commune" and maybe a forth variation as in "Jethro Tull" or "Yul Brynner". Is it supposed to be an "a", "ou", a French Ygreek sound, or whatever?
I think, you would agree with me that "Friar Tuck" does not rhyme with "Zulu" sonically when you hear English people pronouncing them. What is then the definite sound of the bleeding letter "u"?

There are actually seven possible phonetic realisations of the letter 'u'—which is still less than the letter 'a'. That sort of ambiguity goes both ways, as not only may a letter have numerous phonetic realisations, but a phoneme may have numerous realisations in writing—if I recall correctly the diphthong /eı/ has something like 30 possible spellings in English (including various dialects).

Basically the reasons for this are simple and by simple I mean complex. English orthography is etymological and has never been subjected to a serious fundamental reform the way that most other European languages have, so that English spelling hasn't really taken into consideration numerous changes in pronunciation over the past 500-600 years. As a result, written English is, accidentally and in a more limited way, sort of like Katharevousa. Moreover, English has a fairly large inventory of vowel sounds and a fairly small inventory of letters to represent them. There are only 6 vowel letters, including y, in the Latin alphabet, but English has about 12 monophthong phonemes (and nearly as many diphthongs and triphthongs, depending on the dialect). By comparison, Greek and Spanish, for example, have 5 monophthongs (the same even).

So, I don't know how this helps you or anyone else, but erm, good luck?

 

[twelveoone]

I realise that I'm responding to comments made months ago, and perhaps some of those who made them are no longer quite in the same place, but the subjects which arose are interesting to me.

I hope no one minds, because it will be unnecessarily long.

First, I have to agree with those who have taken the position that rhyme is a constraint, but that that's not necessarily a bad thing. I also agree with twelveoone about some people, particularly those not well versed in poetry (pun intended), perceiving rhyme as the definitive feature of poetry. Sad though that is.

There is nothing at all wrong with rhyme and it may add a wonderful lyrical element to a poem, but like any form or constraint it may be used to inspire greater creativity or it may be a great and undue limitation, an empty structure which the would-be poet is blindly and soullessly trying to fill. It is a constraint, but if it feels like a constraint, it may be a case of the latter.





This is very true. Something is always lost in translation and other things are gained—with the caveat that there is no value judgement necessarily implied by either term.

Which is especially problematic for me as all of my favourite poetry is in translation from Classical Chinese or Japanese—both of which are somewhat beyond the scope of my learning.

It varies just how much it is true, though. There is, of course, the general fact that a translation is never quite the same thing as the original, and hence in that sense true translation is impossible, but there are some things which are absolutely untranslatable in any sense. There's a famous couplet by Mirza Ghalib, for instance, that has 18 possible meanings in Urdu—there is absolutely no way to render that in another language in any meaningful sense, far beyond the general inability to capture everything in translation.

Moreover, there are sometimes structural features of languages and subsequently their poetry which have no real analogue in other languages. In Chinese poetry, for example, the jintishi form required specific use of the four tones of Middle Chinese. That formal structure is difficult to reimagine in English, not being tonal and having nothing quite equivalent—some translators might consider metre similarly, others might use assonance, others might avoid the question altogether.

A translation is itself a reading of the original—one of the infinite possible interpretations of a work; even when it is a 'good' translation which attempts to capture all of the possibilities inherent in the original, you are still getting the translators understanding of the work—and whatever accidents inherent in their wording are introduced.

And whatever the difficulties of translation overall, a poem is perhaps the most difficult thing to translate.

But if you can't read a work in the original, read as many translations as you can find.



As far as European poetry is concerned anyway. Rhyme was most likely introduced from Arabic poetry in the Middle Ages.

But Chinese poetry has utilised rhyming since its earliest origins in the Shi Jing some 3000 years ago—not that you'd know it from the majority of English translations of Chinese poetry (and I've been known to prefer it that way, to be honest).

Incidentally, the question of why the Shi Jing didn't rhyme any more was historically a major impetus within China for the exploration of the development of the Chinese language.



There are actually seven possible phonetic realisations of the letter 'u'—which is still less than the letter 'a'. That sort of ambiguity goes both ways, as not only may a letter have numerous phonetic realisations, but a phoneme may have numerous realisations in writing—if I recall correctly the diphthong /eı/ has something like 30 possible spellings in English (including various dialects).

Basically the reasons for this are simple and by simple I mean complex. English orthography is etymological and has never been subjected to a serious fundamental reform the way that most other European languages have, so that English spelling hasn't really taken into consideration numerous changes in pronunciation over the past 500-600 years. As a result, written English is, accidentally and in a more limited way, sort of like Katharevousa. Moreover, English has a fairly large inventory of vowel sounds and a fairly small inventory of letters to represent them. There are only 6 vowel letters, including y, in the Latin alphabet, but English has about 12 monophthong phonemes (and nearly as many diphthongs and triphthongs, depending on the dialect). By comparison, Greek and Spanish, for example, have 5 monophthongs (the same even).

So, I don't know how this helps you or anyone else, but erm, good luck?

erm, It did!
Rhyme is a tool, any tool has a use and a "not use" (constraint), try chopping down a tree with a hammer. You wind up with a tree still standing and full of hammer heads.
re: Chinese, spoken is now Mandarin, which won by one vote over Cantonese in the founding of the republic. As was explained to me (not verified) much early Chinese poetry would have been in a language in the Wu family, of which neither Mandarin nor Cantonese* (I need to recheck this, one) is in.
I have had a poem read to me in both Mandarin and Shanghaiese and it seemed to have been true.
Thank you this post is most enlightening and enjoyable. Thank you, again, it is always a pleasure to meet someone that knows more than I did.
re: Translation, even in English. You point about a word in Urdu having 18 meanings...you really can't read the same poem twice in your native tongue.

 

[Equinoxe]

erm, It did!
Rhyme is a tool, any tool has a use and a "not use" (constraint), try chopping down a tree with a hammer. You wind up with a tree still standing and full of hammer heads.

True.

But you can cut down a tree with an ax or with a saw; the end result will be much the same, but the process will be quite different.

What that extension of your metaphor has to do with poetry, I haven't decided yet.

re: Chinese, spoken is now Mandarin, which won by one vote over Cantonese in the founding of the republic. As was explained to me (not verified) much early Chinese poetry would have been in a language in the Wu family, of which neither Mandarin nor Cantonese* (I need to recheck this, one) is in.
I have had a poem read to me in both Mandarin and Shanghaiese and it seemed to have been true.

As I understand it: Mandarin is perhaps the least conservative variety of Chinese, so it tends not to do justice, in that sense, to classical Chinese poetry. Wu varieties, and probably even moreso Min¹ varieties, are (generally speaking) much more conservative, preserving many of the features of Old and Middle Chinese that are now lost in Mandarin. Though there are, of course, some changes and innovations even in those varieties (Shanghainese, in particular, has dramatically overhauled the MC tone system, far beyond any other). Cantonese, even, preserves many syllable codas that were lost, so many rhymes in older poetry work better in Cantonese than Mandarin.

So, Mandarin is basically the worst choice of modern Chinese varieties for reading classical poetry.

Given Mandarin's status as the prestige variety of Chinese, though, this is not terribly surprising. Prestige dialects tend to be subject to standardisation and levelling as they spread beyond their "native" bounds and often change much more rapidly. RP English, for example is more phonologically innovative than regional English dialects (or American dialects, even GA), and contemporary versions sound quite different than they did as recently as 50-60 years ago (nobody sounds like the Queen and even BBC newscasters don't sound like BBC newscasters anymore).

¹ That being said, unfortunately, I don't find Min Chinese dialects to be especially pleasant sounding. At all. Wu dialects, oddly enough, are nonetheless rather pretty.

Thank you this post is most enlightening and enjoyable. Thank you, again, it is always a pleasure to meet someone that knows more than I did.
re: Translation, even in English. You point about a word in Urdu having 18 meanings...you really can't read the same poem twice in your native tongue.

Oh, thank you. From your reputation in certain quarters, I'd almost be inclined to take that sarcastically! But, honestly, thank you! I'm quite flattered.

And that's true! And much like with translations, just how true it is depends on the poem. Ideally—very true.

 

[twelveoone]

Oh, thank you. From your reputation in certain quarters, I'd almost be inclined to take that sarcastically! But, honestly, thank you! I'm quite flattered.

And that's true! And much like with translations, just how true it is depends on the poem. Ideally—very true.

If you chose to be flattered, do so again, as any information I don't know, is worth a thank you.

As for my reputation, it is greatly enhanced by certain quarters, OK, there I was being sarcastic.

As for the hammer and the tree, I must have been still bashing Kilmer. It should have been house, I just liked the image of a tree full of hammerheads, Sharknado poetry, which just might be an improvement in new poems over four something to says in one day. Oh, yeh, the thread was rhyme...

Rhyme is fine and it don't have to be at the end o the line, yo!

 

[pelegrino]

"A Week From Hell" / (short excerpt)

Avra, 4//9/2012

Jin and lime
they don’t rhyme
but they go together well,
in the provinces of Rhine
other word games could define
this short week and all its hell.

 

[The Mutt]

would disagree, the value (relationship with all other words) of a word would change, it would constrain the meaning. "constrain" probably is not the best word to use, nor possibly is "meaning".
Four rhymed words at the end of the line out of sixteen, would probably mean the writer assumes more "value" would be assigned to those as opposed to than if all sixteen where rhymed.

Tempted to ask what prompted this line of inquiry? Outside of the fact that this is what you like to do (no slur, just writer's defense of own material, which every writer does, Poe, Eliot, Keats, et al.) Is there any other reason?

I will also gleefully point out that rhyme is easily programmed into a machine, and would also gleefully point out why. A huge percentage of people only recognize "poetry" as poetry, if it has end rhyme.


And greetings to Airstrip One:

It was only an 'opeless fancy.
It passed like an Ipril dye,
But a look an' a word an' the dreams they stirred
They 'ave stolen my 'eart awye!

They sye that time 'eals all things,
They sye you can always forget;
But the smiles an' the tears acrorss the years
They twist my 'eart-strings yet!


An obscure point to ponder, Milton despised it, yet used it, in a rather famous sonnet.

Because I like rhyming poetry and write a lot of it, and I get lot's of comments telling me it's cheap or childish or greeting card shit.

I love the sonnet form, and I'm proud when I can pull off a decent one.

 

[oggbashan]

My latest rhyming doggerel has just been posted:

http://www.literotica.com/p/song-of-king-alfred

Once I start on rhyming doggerel, my only problems are knowing when to stop, or whether I should have started at all.