Why is rhyming used in poems

Off-centered Rhyme occurs when the rhyme scheme is placed in an unusual position within the poem, perhaps in the middle of a line for example. Mirror Rhyme occurs when words are used that don't exactly rhyme, but are reflections of one another ex. Sporadic Rhyme is occasional rhyme that occurs unpredictably in a poem with most of the lines being unrhymed.

Thorn Rhyme is a line that stands out because it intentionally doesn't rhyme in a poem in which most of the lines do rhyme. No Rhyme Rhyme occurs when there are no words in the English language that match a particular word to rhyme it. Some examples would be the words "orange, silver, purple, and month". Here the poet would need to be creative in the rhyming scheme and perhaps try to rhyme orange with something like door hinge; silver with pilfer as a sight rhyme, or purple with burple, as the color of a hiccup I admit that one is certainly a stretch, but you know what I mean.

Finally, all rhyme schemes typically affect the meaning, impact, and feeling of a poem, but they do not usually affect the structure of the poem itself; rhyme is purely ornamental. Rhyme should never dominate a poem; once it does it becomes like a woman wearing too much eye shadow. His new book, Get Wisdom, is recently published by Xlibris Div. Random House Publishing and is available at ext. Skip to main content Skip to footer While Ezra Pound is largely credited with starting the free verse poetry movement that created more relaxed style requirements and eliminated the wide-spread use of formal poetry, there are still plenty of aficionados out there who firmly believe that all poetry should rhyme.

Establishing Structure and Rhythm — The placement of rhyming words and the establishment of structure, meter and vocal rhythm in a poem can significantly affect the way it sounds when read aloud.

Fans of the formal rhyming styles insist that rhymes are necessary in terms of establishing rhythm. Assisting in Memorization — One of the reasons why many early poems were penned with rhyme schemes can be traced back to low literacy rates and the desire to memorize verses.

Adhering to Style Guidelines — Formal styles of poetry dictate not only the number of lines and the number of syllables within those lines, but also a strict rhyme scheme that must be adhered to. In order to create classic, formal poetry, a poet must write verses that rhyme.

Creating Symmetry — Symmetry among the verses of a poem can rely largely upon the way that a rhyme scheme is created by the poet. For this reason alone, some poetry purists refuse to entertain the notion of unstructured, asymmetrical free verse. Cacophony opposes rhythm, and is abrupt to the ear. Rhyme is the matching up of sounds and syllables, usually at the end of lines. External rhyme is the rhyming of words at the end of lines. Shel Silverstein's poetry is a great example of this.

Rhyme functions in much the same way as rhythm. I liken this to rhythmic syncopation the sharp emphasis of the down-beat happening not where you predict it, carrying past each bar into the next with a sense of off-balance surprise.

In the first six lines of this sonnet there isn't a single end-stopped line—every line runs on! Not content with breaking the sentence across the poetic line, he breaks a word - "ex-cellence" across the first two lines so he can rhyme "ex-" with "lax. Rather than the subtlety of enjambment, this technique calls attention to itself, and deliberately so! Does "salarymen" rhyme with "monuments"? Both have "men" in them, so should we call this consonance or assonance or half-feminine rhyme?

Why should we care, when we can just appreciate how "salarymen" lines up perfectly with "monuments", with one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed? And what about that splatter of "ronin", "serotonin" and "oxytocin"? The last two riff in the language of science, but the first hops registers to Japanese to achieve internal feminine rhymes that bridge not only cultures but a startling metaphor.

This is bebop at its finest—the familiar tools of enjambment and internal rhyme taken to the next level of virtuosity, where flash and pizzazz is the name of the game rather than mere subtlety. These five examples illustrate how different takes on rhyme can be used to convey a variety of moods: a familiar, pleasing standard; subtle, laid-back grooves; or an experimental freestyle riff-off.

So the next time you hear a poem read out loud, listen for the rhymes—whether full rhymes, feminine rhymes, consonances or assonances. No matter if the poem purports to be free verse or not—every song has a chord progression and a chord structure, and every poem has hidden music lurking between or at the end of its lines.

Read next: Selected poems from UnFree Verse. Joshua Ip is the Singapore Literature Prize-winning author of sonnets from the singlish upsized edition , making love with scrabble tiles , and sonnets from the singlish