Rhyme and meter are used intentionally in poetry to create a gratifying sound, cadence, or an echo for emotional effect. It offers an upbeat format for humor, hope and optimism to merrily dance. Rhyme is known for its complexities and varieties, while showcasing passion, playfulness, power, and pleasure — and is a skill honed and esteemed by songwriters and poets alike.
When we were children, we likely responded to rhyme’s soothing capabilities as it helped us calm and redirect our anxiousness. Rhyme also plays a part in our early development by securing our language skills and learning, while aiding us in making relational connections and expanding our memory. Rhyme becomes a childhood friend, beside us when we’re coping and supporting us as we’re taking in new information.
As I actively assist those engaged in cathartic poetry writing, some explain how despite not intending to craft a specific rhythm when sitting down to write, their lines surface in rhyme. And sometimes, after a certain point, they feel frustrated because they really did not want to continue expressing themselves with predictability or in sing-song fashion, but it seemed to keep happening. Since I’ve been there myself, I understand the internal conflict of feeling retained or blocked.
RHYME OR NO RHYME?
When learning about writing and poetry, we’re taught the rules and the different styles of rhyme. When we read literature from past centuries and early modern masterpieces, we’re swept by the romantic rhythm of classical poets. In cathartic writing, I like to maintain there are no rules.
Going back, when I initially began writing poems for the sake of personal cleansing and making sense of what I lived through, my poems appeared to automatically arrange themselves in sound repetition and even structured stanzas. I was partly creating visual and sound order to what had been previously felt as chaotic and unprocessed raw material. It was a creative way to organize what I was holding. Since poetry was used as a tool in my childhood for speech therapy sessions, and prior to that I was comforted by beloved nursery rhymes, I remembered how rhyme had helped me. So as an adult, all the positive, alleviating associations allowed me to return to rhyme in my recovery and would guide me into a sequence of healing stages. It was like being reunited with a long-lost friend who brought me into self-awareness through verse.
Rhyme was a ship bringing me safely to shore, as it held the content of my heart.
Over time, however, I developed mixed feelings about rhyme and I didn’t want to habitually create poems using sound patterns to enunciate what my emotions and wounding longed to convey. I was interested in more ways to relieve the tension and at times, rhyme felt like it was building the suspense or restraining my expression. I was ready to break free and run through fertile fields with pulse-pounding aliveness. At first it was irritating because my words continued to fall into alignment as if I’d been stuck in a rhyme rut. Eventually, I recognized the importance of this stage and that I could transition and experience a shift in my writing if I persevere and practice. I wasn’t thinking that the results of my writing needed to be good for readers to ingest, I just wanted to feel liberated in the act of writing.
GROWING BEYOND RHYME
A few proactive steps I would make was to bravely delete the rhyme words on a draft or somewhat finalized piece and allow other words to surface as I opened myself wider emotionally. I needed to provide ample room so my vocabulary and tenor could flex and stretch. Or, I would write two versions of the same piece, one being non-rhyming and one set in rhyme. I also employed other techniques to expand my range and get in touch with my other writing faces. For instance, I liked tanka and haiku since they are useful ‘short-song’ lyrical templates for cathartic writing. I also worked at writing a single line each day, or written daily emotional check-ins and random journal entries. These are simply a few common approaches to take writing into an everyday practice and encourage your voice to strengthen over time.
Now I acknowledge rhyme as more than a literary device. Rhyme is a trusted holder of our tender words and wounds. Wounds inflicted in childhood and thereafter. I see rhyme as a comforter, a regulator, a healer and a reliable helper delivering our material, while softening or molding it into personal expression. It’s really quite beautiful.
And I have come to revere the use of rhyme in another’s writing as a means of converting emotional pain into language that ought to be recognized. When I witness it, I know it is serving a sacred purpose and I’m in awe of its medicinal properties. When I read it coming from others in healing, I pause and reflect. I’m always astonished at someone’s ability to craft a language for their endurance, their heartbreak, their triumphs, and their presence. This is one of the motivations calling me to be a writing caregiver for those immersed in a therapeutic writing process.
YOU CAN RHYME IF YOU WANT TO
Cherish your rhymes, because in the act, you are sculpting what was formless into form. You can use rhyme anytime you want to. And you don’t always have to rhyme if you don’t want to. You can move forward in your creative awakening with thoughts and musing written in any style that happens to inspire you. Any order your birthed words are asking to be arranged. You can experiment and refine. When the words no longer feel the need to be braced and feel confident to venture out vulnerably, it’s okay to explore your range and try new ways of writing by letting them fly freely.
And once in a while, a rhyme will appear from out of nowhere to tip its head as a reminder, a wink, a nod in the right direction and a delightful note to land in your soul. It’s all good. Your relationship with rhyme is a positive and affirming one to personally treasure.
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Your beautiful article was a marvelous gift in terms of helping me, understand that separation regarding the use of rhyme, yet still so womb-like , comforting it can be as well, particularly as emotions not expressed, become excavated and put into words on the page. Thank you..