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Rhyme, alliteration, assonance and consonance are means of creating repetitive patterns of sound. They may exist used as an independent structural chemical element in a poem, to reinforce rhythmic patterns, or as an ornamental element. They tin also acquit a meaning separate from the repetitive sound patterns created. Rhyme consists of identical ("hard-rhyme") or similar ("soft-rhyme") sounds placed at the ends of lines or at predictable locations within lines ("internal rhyme").

1. Types of rhyming

Masculine rhyme

Masculine rhyme is  a rhyme that matches only one syllable, ordinarily at the finish of respective lines. The concluding syllable is stressed. This is the most common type of rhyme.

Perfect rhyme

Perfect rhyme is when two words or phrases accommodate to both of 2 weather condition:

  1. The stressed vowel sound in both words must be identical, as well as any subsequent sounds. For case, "heaven" and "high"; "skylight" and "highlight".
  2. The joint that precedes the vowel in the words must differ. For example, "edible bean" and "green" is a perfect rhyme, while "get out" and "believe" is non.

Word pairs that satisfy the offset condition but not the 2d (such as the same "go out" and "believe") are technically identities (also known as identical rhymes or identicals). Homophones are sometimes classified equally identical rhymes, though the classification isn't entirely accurate.

Feminine rhyme

Feminine rhyme applies to the rhyming of one or more unstressed syllables, such as "dicing" and "enticing." And then the second-to-final or pre-final syllable is stressed.

Half rhyme

Half rhyme is the rhyming of the ending consonant sounds in a word (such as "tell" with "toll," or "sopped" with "leapt"). This is also termed "off-rhyme," "slant rhyme," "B-Rhyme" or apophany.

2. Position of rhyme in verse

Rhyme can exist applied in couplets (2-line verses) as well as in triplets (three-line verses) and stanzas (4 or 6-line verses). For example, in this poetry 1 of two, from CXXXVIII When lovely woman stoops to folly, past Oliver Goldsmith (Francis T. Palgrave, ed. (1824–1897), The Gilt Treasury,1875):

  • When lovely woman stoops to folly,
  • And finds too late that men betray,
  • What amuse tin soothe her melancholy,(folly rhymes with melancholy – so it's feminine rhyme, not perfect rhyme)
  • What art tin can wash her guilt away? (existtray rhymes with away – so it'south masculine rhyme, only non perfect rhyme either)

3. Rhyme + feet + lines = poem

The rhyme, the feet and the number of lines together make up the characteristics of a particular form or genre of verse. Generally, one can see what type of poem it is by what blazon of meter and rhyme it has, and how many lines information technology has. In a rhyme scheme, beneath, the matching messages show the rhyming lines.

So ABAD means that lines i and three rhyme, non lines 2 and 4.
The scheme is given and below information technology, what it is. The breaks between the groups of letters bespeak the divisions betwixt verses.

ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH Alternate rhyme
ABABBCBC + BCBC Ballade
ABA BCC DDE DE + DDEDE/CCDDEDE Chant Purple
A,B,A,B,B Cinquain
A,A,B,B Clerihew
A,A, B,B C,C D,D … Couplet
ABBA Enclosed rhyme
17 syllables (or on) in 3 lines of 5, 7 and v syllables Haiku
17 syllables, 4+ lines / vertical structure Haiku class: Haiqua
13 syllables (on) in 5-3-5   / 3-5-3 word lines Haiku grade: Lune
17 syllables or less, ane line Haiku form: Monoku
ABABCDECDE Keatsian ode
AABBA Composition
AABBABCCDDCDEEFFEF McCarron Couplet
AAAAAA Monorhyme / Tanaga
ABABBCC Rhyme Royal
ABaAabAB Rondeau
AbAabbA Rondelet
ABAR; BAB; ABAR   (where R is the refrain) Roundel
AABA Rubaiyat
AAABAB Scottish Stanza
ABCDEF FAEBDC CFDABE ECBFAD DEACFB BDFECA Sestina (6 x 6)
ABCB Simple 4-line quatrain
ABBA ABBA CDE CDE / ABBA ABBA CDC DCD Sonnet: Petrarchan
ABAB CDCD EFEF GG Sonnet: Shakespearian
ABAB BCBC CDCD EE Sonnet: Spenserian
aBaBccDDeFFeGG Stanza Onegin
ABABBCBCC Stanza Spenserian
AABA BBCB CCDC DDDD Stopping by Wood on a Snowy Evening Form
ABA / BB (5-vii-5 / 7-seven syllables) Tanka
ABA BCB CDC ending on "YZY Z", "YZY ZZ", or "YZY ZYZ" Terza
ABCBBB, or AA,B,CC,CB,B,B The Raven Stanza
AAA Triplet
A1bA2 abA1 abA2 abA1 abA2 abA1A2 Villanelle
No rhyming scheme Free Verse
" data-medium-file="https://marthebijman.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/odes1.jpg?w=300" data-large-file="https://marthebijman.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/odes1.jpg?w=454" class="wp-image-6425 size-medium" src="https://marthebijman.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/odes1.jpg?w=300&h=233" alt=""I'm afraid he's got Odes, Mrs. Keats": Cartoon from The Best of Private Eye 1987 - 1989 - The Satiric Verses, by Salmonella Bordes, Private Eye Productions & André Deutsch, London, 1989" width="300" height="233" srcset="https://marthebijman.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/odes1.jpg?w=300&h=233 300w, https://marthebijman.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/odes1.jpg?w=150&h=117 150w, https://marthebijman.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/odes1.jpg 454w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px">
"I'thousand afraid he's got Odes, Mrs. Keats": Cartoon from The Best of Private Eye 1987 – 1989 – The Satiric Verses, by Salmonella Bordes, Private Heart Productions & André Deutsch, London, 1989

4. Poetry and singing

Rhyme is probably the most important element in the lyrics of a vocal. All songwriters, singers and recording artists must know – and be highly skilled at – writing lyrics, and to boot, rhyming lyrics. Otherwise, if they can simply write the music, they accept to partner with someone who can. And to effectively combine music and lyrics is profoundly, intensely DIFFICULT. Different novels, where yous have pages and pages in which to make yourself understood, lyrics are i) audible and visual communication combined 2) limited by both poetical form and musical conventions and three) further express past the one outstanding chemical element of poesy but specifically music, namely RHYTHM. And then, all songwriters, singers, lyricists and recording artists need to know about RHYMING.

The Greek origin of the term poetry is Poiesis. Poïesis (Aboriginal Greek: ποίησις) is etymologically derived from the ancient term ποιέω, which means "to brand". This discussion, the root of our modern "poetry", was start a verb, meaning "an action that transforms and continues the world". In ancient times, poesy was sung and performed. Poetry was transferred orally, before it was written downwardly and published.

Leonard Cohen equally poet and lyricist

Lyrics is the modern version of an ancient art – poetry. Call back of rap as modern poetry set to a rhythm or a beat. Information technology's a natural progression – from poems to lyrics, for example, early in his career, Leonard Cohen first read his poems out loud, then performed them to a drumbeat, or minimalist backing, before he turned them into songs. Nonetheless, when he sings, he sounds like he is talking. When he performs this favourite ane of lovers everywhere: A Thousand Kisses Deep, he refers toStopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, by Robert Frost: "Only I have promises to proceed,|/ And miles to get before I sleep."

Here he recites the poem:

The full text is here. He besides sings the poem, and it has been used in a movie with the aforementioned name. It is astonishing how many rhymes he found for "deep" – meat, sweet, sleep, heat, sleet, physique, armada, unique, weak, meek, complete, etc.

But the interesting thing is, despite the mixture of rhymes, half-rhymes and  internal rhyme, all you remember at the end of it, is the evocative phrase "a thousand kisses deep", that is reinforced by all the other rhyming words. The sung version is below. How he changes the pauses or caesuras in the poem to fit the music, for example, breaking before "in-vin-ci-ble defeat".

Cohen has explained that:

"In that location are about 30 verses of it that I've done and hopefully they'll work their mode into other songs. I retrieve there are half-dozen verses in this version. On the Net, I published 12 verses of the song. (..) It'due south taken so long to write and it was so much of my ordinary day even when I was in the meditation hall spending long hours. I suppose I was supposed to be calming my listen or directing it to other areas, just I was working on the rhymes for A Thousand Kisses Deep. I found the mediation hall was an splendid place to work on songs. I could concentrate on a verse, work out the rhymes and the ideas would come up."

Performed poetry

All over the globe, poetry and songs were created long before the novel or other written forms. In many countries, like China and Japan, the poem form is regarded every bit much more important than the novel. Skill and mental acuity are demonstrated by writing poems, not novels.

Coming total circle – from the sung narrative, through poems to lyrics – there are all the same sure performance versions of poems today that are largely narrative in format. Co-ordinate to folklorist Kay Turner, "Even if a story is the same, beyond ages and cultures, each civilisation will tell it differently, because each 1 has its own genres and cultural rules." That'due south led to a host of unlike traditions and practices of performing stories around the globe, including:

  • Hula dancing (traditional hula dancers trip the light fantastic toe not to a beat, but to language, Hawaiian-linguistic communication chants or songs. No words – no meaning.)
  • Chinese Shadow Puppetry (with limbs controlled with rods) that tell folk stories, issues moral lessons, and projects specific local customs.
  • Zajal – The classical Arabic version of a verse slam or rap battle, would y'all believe it.
  • Cunto – Sicilian storytelling relying on improvisation and alternate between sung verse and spoken prose.
  • Rakugo – Japanese tradition of monologues past a single storyteller, called a hanashika.
  • Griots, or Jelis, the traditional keepers of a club'due south history in W African cultures, who often play instruments such as the kora, similar to a lute, and preserve family and cultural histories in the manner of a genealogist.
  • Bharatanatyam – Indian temple dancers, or devadasis, perform bharatanatyam, a dance that is considered a course of prayer, telling the stories of specific deities
  • Calypso – Adult in the early 20th century in Trinidad, where the lyrics, which described local life and neighborhood dramas, were used every bit a tool to share news and shine a calorie-free on everything from the challenges of a banana farmer to local political abuse.

These forms clearly illustrate the convergence of prose, poetry and lyrics. Merely ultimately, what makes the different between prose and poems, story-telling and lyrics, is simply RHYMING. You can't rhyme, or you can't friction match the rhyme to the shell or rhythm, Mr. Songwriter, y'all have a problem.

5. Sounds in rhymes

Ingemination is the repetition of letters or letter of the alphabet-sounds at the beginning of two or more than words immediately succeeding each other, or at short intervals; or the recurrence of the same letter in accented parts of words. Ingemination can take many forms, for instance:

  • Consonance occurs where a consonant sound is repeated throughout a sentence without putting the audio but at the front of a discussion. (For example: I tawt I taw a puddy-tat — Tweetie-bird from Loony Tunes)
  • Assonance is the repetition of vowels (a, e, i, o, u, and y, sometimes due west – and combinations of those, in English language) in two or more than words immediately succeeding each other, in a line or at the end of a line. (For example: Fire at the private eye hired to pry in thousandy business organisation.— Eminem, Criminal)
  • Sibilance is the repetition of s-sounds like due south or sh or z in ii or more than words immediately succeeding each other. (For example: Trusssst in me, jusssst in me, sssshut your eyesssss, trusssst in me —" Kaa the Python" from the Disney movie, The Jungle Book, 1967)
  • B-Rhymes, also called camber rhymes or half-rhymes

B-Rhymes are words that have a high degree of consonance, or similarity in audio. Words that fully rhyme are exactly the same in HOW THEY Audio in their final 1,2 or 3 syllables. B-Rhymes accept sounds that don't rhyme, only still audio like. Slant rhymes have the advantage of existence novel, different or unexpected. This tin be used to avert rhyming clichés (east.g. rhyming "dearest" with "pigeon") or obvious rhymes, ("me" and "see" and "be") and gives the writer greater liberty and flexibility in forming lines of verse. Additionally, many words accept no perfect rhyme in English, necessitating the utilise of slant rhyme – here's a listing of them.

The use of one-half rhyme may also enable the structure of longer multisyllabic rhymes than otherwise possible, for instance in rap, costless poesy or prose poesy.

6. Rhyme scheme

In many languages, including modern European languages and Arabic, poets apply rhyme in fix patterns every bit a structural chemical element for specific poetic forms, such every bit ballads, sonnets and rhyming couplets. However, the employ of structural rhyme is not universal fifty-fifty within the European tradition. Many modern poets avoid traditional rhyme schemes instead being "gratis verse". Which is oft much like talking or an internal dialogue. This makes it necessary for the poet to apply other features to distinguish their poem from prose – for instance internal rhyme, alliteration, strong metaphor, intense emotion, strong closing lines, etc.

Classical Greek and Latin poetry did not use rhyme – they used meter. Some rhyming schemes accept go associated with a specific language, civilisation or menstruum, while other rhyming schemes have achieved use across languages, cultures or time periods. Some forms of poetry conduct a consistent and well-defined rhyming scheme, such as the chant royal or the rubaiyat, while other poetic forms have variable rhyme schemes.

Near rhyme schemes are described using letters that correspond to sets of rhymes, so if the get-go, second and fourth lines of a quatrain rhyme with each other and the third line does not rhyme, the quatrain is said to accept an "a-a-b-a" rhyme scheme. Inevitably, the rhyme scheme is linked to the meter of the verse form. The words used define the meter, which in turn defines the rhyme scheme.


Next commodity in the series almost Poetry and Lyrics: Metre/meter and anxiety