You Can Write Poetry - Jeff Mock [29]
You can practice rhyme, and the other devices of sound, by putting words together and listening to the sounds they make, the way the sound of one word is echoed in a subsequent word. The late poet and teacher Richard Hugo wrote that "as a young poet I set an arbitrary rule that when I made a sound I felt was strong, a sound I liked specially, I'd make a similar sound three to eight syllables later. Of course it would often be a slant rhyme." In many ways, as you write, you'll find it more engaging to follow the sounds of a poem than its sense. Sounds will lead you where you wouldn't otherwise think to go. Frankly, it's easy to make sense. We do it every day. It's more challenging, and more rewarding, to make interesting sounds.
PRACTICE SESSION
1. Write a draft at least twelve lines in length with six true rhymes. All rhymes must be end rhymes. Include a thunderstorm in the draft.
2. Write a draft at least twenty lines in length with six slant rhymes. All rhymes must be internal rhymes. Each rhyming word must appear within two lines of its partner. Include a dog (or a cat) in the draft.
Measured Steps: Meter
On the old television show American Bandstand, the host Dick Clark would play a new song and ask a guest to rate it. One time or another, a guest would invariably say, "It has a good beat to dance to. I give it a ninety-eight." The rhythm of poetry works in similar fashion, like a song's beat. English is an accented language, which means we pronounce some syllables with more emphasis than others. They're stressed syllables. (Dictionaries have pronunciation guides that show the stressed and unstressed syllables of a word.) The word pronunciation, for example, consists of five syllables: pro-nun-ci-a-tion. Say the word and listen to the emphasis you place on the syllables. The second syllable (nun) is a minor stress, the fourth (a) is a major stress, and the others are unstressed: pro-NUN-ci-A-tion. Your voice accents the fourth syllable the most.
The rhythm of poetry comes from the interplay between stressed and unstressed syllables. Like the devices of sound, rhythm depends on repetition. It's like the percussion of a song. The bass guitar and drums lay down the beat that tells the dancers how to move. When the beat changes, the dancers respond to that change. That's how rhythm works: The stressed syllables lay down the poem's beat. Listen to the beat Shakespeare uses in Sonnet 73 (the stressed syllables appear in capital letters):
That TIME of YEAR thou MAYST in ME beHOLD
When YELIow LEAVES, or NONE, or FEW, do HANG
UpON those BOUGHS which SHAKE aGAINST the COLD,
BARE RUin'd CHOIRS where LATE the SWEET BIRDS SANG.
In ME thou SEE'ST the TWILIGHT of SUCH DAY
As AFter SUNset FADeth in the WEST,
Which BY and BY BLACK NIGHT doth TAKE aWAY,
DEATH'S SECond SELF, that SEALS up ALL in REST.
In ME thou SEE'ST the GLOWing of SUCH FIRE
That ON the ASHes of his YOUTH doth LIE,
As the DEATH-BED whereON it MUST exPIRE,
ConSUM'D with THAT which IT was NOURish'd BY,
THIS thou perCEIV'st, which MAKES thy LOVE MORE STRONG,
To LOVE that WELL which THOU MUST LEAVE ere LONG.
The rhythm of this poem depends on the repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables in a recognizable pattern. The basic unit of rhythm is the foot, which consists of a set number of stressed and unstressed syllables. These feet are not invented, however. They occur naturally in the language, in the way we speak. Poets manipulate them, though, to create the rhythmic patterns of their poems. The iamb, the most common rhythmic foot in general and the basic foot of Sonnet 73, is a two-syllable foot, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable:
That TIME / of YEAR / thou MAYST / in ME / beHOLD
The first three lines of Sonnet 73 repeat this rhythm exactly (ta-DUM, ta-DUM, ta-DUM, ta-DUM, ta-DUM) and thus establish a pattern of beats, the poem's predominant rhythm.
Too many ta-DUMs in a row, however, grow monotonous, so Shakespeare changes the beat slightly in the fourth line: