The freedom to not-rhyme must include the freedom to rhyme. Then verse will be “free.”
...
Rhymes may be so far apart, you cannot hear them, but they can hear each other, as if whispering on a toy telephone made of two paper cups and a length of string.
...
Off rhymes founded on consonants are more literary than off rhymes founded on vowels (assonance). Vowels are shifty. Assonance is in the mouth, not the ear. It is performative.
Consonance brings forth what is different, so we listen for what is the same (harmonic). Assonance brings forth likeness; we listen for dissonance. The vowel is the third of the chord.
Translators who translate poems that rhyme into poems that don’t rhyme solely because they claim keeping the rhyme is impossible without doing violence to the poem have done violence to the poem. They are also lazy.
Rhyme is an irrational, sensual link between two words. It is chemical. It is alchemical.
...
Rhyme frees the poet from what he wants to say.
- A.E Stallings, from her essay "Presto Manifesto!", as published in Poetry Magazine (February 2009). You can read the whole thing here.
No comments:
Post a Comment