Exploring Rhyme and Meter
Midge Goldberg
Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start…
Meter and form are like the notes, scales, and time signatures of music; once you know them, you can use them, play with them, improvise, stray away, and come back—but only once you have that solid footing (pun intended) in the basics. Meter is the underlying rhythm that moves you through the poem.
We'll start with the metrical foot and the line, and we'll move on to common poetic forms—their meters, rhyme schemes, and stanza patterns—including quatrains, the sonnet, and the villanelle, The idea is to notice how a poet chooses a particular form to complement or contrast with meaning.
Rhyme in poetry can accomplish many things. With its innate ability to set up expectations for the ear, it can satisfy, disappoint, or “bring a poem home” just like a song. Rhyme can, of course, add humor. By being unexpected, it can shock. And when you’re pushed to find a rhyme, it can suddenly take your poem in a direction that you didn’t imagine, and yet takes it in exactly the direction the poem was meant to go.
We'll address basics of rhyme: the definition of a rhyme, masculine and feminine rhymes, slant rhymes, then examine rhyming forms—sonnets, villanelles, ballad stanzas, triolets, and rhyme that can be found in any form. As in the meter portion, the idea is to notice how a poet chooses a particular rhyme scheme or rhyming form to engender a particular mood or reaction. Though rhyme is often associated with humor, some of the darkest moments in poetry are accomplished by using rhyme effectively (think Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”).
The class will be a combination of instruction, discussion, some in-class exercises, and a small assignment for the Saturday afternoon free writing time.
