Mother Nature Meets Father Time

Destined to write? Destined to rhyme?

I have been teased for much of my life because of my speech patterns, or my thought patterns. Sometimes, a friend will ask me to assist with a writing project. Sure, I'll look it over for errors, and offer any suggestions. Then comes the questions which I dread.

How do come up with a good rhyme? Do you have a favorite thesaurus? How do you match teh meter when it is appropriate? How do you know when to vary it?

My answer: I don't. I have only touched a thesaurus briefly in high school English class, when the assignment required the students to specifically investigate preselected terms for alternate possiblities. Sometimes it was a rhyme, sometimes it was just any synonym, and other times an antonym was necessary. The exercise took a whole five minutes to complete, and I have not opened a thesaurus since. Perhaps I should?

My best loved poems were never originally poems, but they flowed with such a poetic sense, it was only appropriate to categorise them as such. Today I received a review which said I tried to hard to rhyme. I had to review the poem, because the only time I ever tried to rhyme was during a recent military exercise, and that was just to make it interesting. The hard part was not to match my own rhyme, but to match the rhyme scheme of the last person, and I had about twenty seconds to develop a response, put it in rhyme, and ensure it matched the given scheme. That, too happened subconsciously for the first two or three hours, before I was made aware of all the rhyming sense. Of course the rhyme was not required, but at some point, after we had been reacting to each other in such fashion, we decided that would be our new standard for the rest of the exercise.

I call it improvisation, but others call it nonsense. The point is, some people simply think in rhyming patterns. My theory is word association. When you are learning to spell in grade school, you are often taught to use word association, if simple repetitive techniques are failing you. If you are dyslexic, with sequencing issues, then simply memorizing the sequence of the letters can become rocket science. Rhyming words often have spelling similarities.

When the emotions take over, and you are responding to a situation, and you choose to write about it, you aren't trying to rhyme, nor are you trying to monitor meter. All you are thinking about is putting the words to the paper- a spelling task!

I think some people just rhyme. I do not think "trying to rhyme" should be considered a critical response for the reader's lack of understanding. If you think a more appropriate word would better explain the feelings you think I am trying to convey, then suggest the word. I am not a mind reader. Just because something has a consistent rhyme pattern, does not mean it was intended. Do not limit your suggestions to the box. Break the rhyme scheme; break the pattern. Don't just tell me to write it out differently, because my brain is stuck with how I wrote it. If you have a specific suggestion, suggest it, or let it go. I am a very open minded person.

At the same rate, I cannot tell you how to rhyme something. I have no idea how to make something rhyme consciously. When people ask me to help them rhyme, I hand them a thesaurus. I am not being cocky, but my own thought patterns rhyme, and I do not know what is in your mind. I am not a mind reader.

If you are not destined to rhyme, then maybe you should stick to free verse. Just because a poem rhymes, does not mean the reviewer must also. If something is meant to rhyme, it will.

As for me, I think I will be reviewing my work fro rhyme patterns. I looked over a few things, and have found comments on old college papers where my professors made comments such as "such a poetic statement" and "good word rhyme association to drive the point home". I guess my poetry is not the only place my rhymes appear, and I am challenging myself to make the rhymes disappear by rewriting many of my most loved poems.

I am not sure how well this will work, but if I have significant success I will post both versions here for you to look at each and let me know how you feel.