A Rant: Cut the Couplet Crap

Just because it rhymes doesn’t make it good verse

Compose aloud: poetry is a sound. Never explain- your reader is as smart as you. Your reader is not just any reader, but is the rare one with ears in his head. —Basil Bunting

Let’s talk prosody, the study of meter and sound of poetry. Generally speaking (very generally), a poet has to choose between formal verse or blank verse. Sometimes, like Bunting, they choose it for a while and then ditch it within a single stanza. For instance, Bunting’s Briggflatts has this:

Name and date/split in soft slate/a few months obliterate

Many poets writing here would split after ‘months’ to form a comfy, “clever” couplet. Bunting doesn’t. Most stanzas of Part I of Briggflatts end with a couplet, but the rest is packed with internal rhyme maybe, but not always:

Dung will not soil the slowworm’s/ mosaic. Breathless lark/drops to nest in sodden trash;/Rawthey truculent, dingy./Drudge at the mallet, the may is down,/fog on fells. Guilty of spring/and spring’s ending/amputated years ache after/the bull is beef, love a convenience./It is easier to die than to remember/Name and date/split in soft slate/a few months obliterate.

I’m really totally for using end-rhyme — And all sorts of other rhyme, like initial rhyme (aka alliteration) and internal rhyme. I do it all the time.

The difficulty in making verse rhyme — and what makes this part of the craft — is not drawing so much attention to the fact that you’re sticking to a rhyme scheme that it overpowers the content itself.

Formalist poetry is potentially far more powerful than blank verse because of that fact. But failure to succeed at that challenge? Might as well write free verse. “I feel an eel on my heel. What’s the deal?” fails to “A slithering sea snake grabs hold of the foot.” But “What can he, changed, tell/her, changed, perhaps dead?/Delight dwindles. Blame/stays the same.” wins our hearts every time over “Clocks move forward, but the heart lingers in the past. Delight follows clocks and blame is chained to the heart.”

So how do you do it well?

• Do it with purpose. What does that mean? It means more than “do it because the last line ended with that sound.” I learned that dense poetry requiring many readings is useful because it’s condensed and rich; combine that with rhyme that aids memory and that richness gets mined by the reader because it’s catchy and lingers.
• Enjambment. Notice how you read the line. If every line ends with a comfy pause or falling intonation at the end, you’re over-stressing the rhyme. Have the line carry over to create motion and increase the pace. That way, you keep the rhyme but don’t scream it.
• Read it aloud. Imagine you don’t know whatever language it is you’re writing in. Is it still pretty? Bringing me to the next point…
• Get some inspiration: Listen to Victor Hugo or Li Bai poems. Find famous poets from other linguistic traditions, listen to readings on YouTube. You’ll hear the poem work without even knowing what it’s even about. Imagine understanding it!
• Mix it up. Instead of AABBCC, try ABCABC or quatrains. Maybe even more irregular, like AABCBABC. Or take the Bunting route, which draws from Sir Gawain to only end in the couplet. Use the rhymes sometimes, if it’s useful.
• Use different kinds of rhymes. What we call ‘rhyming’ is usually only one sort of rhyme, called end rhyme. English has a rich tradition of initial rhyme or alliteration. There’s also internal rhyme, which is also powerful.

Let me know how these work for you. Send me your links or drop a response for anything you’re struggling with. I’m more than happy to be a sounding board for ideas to help you succeed.

Also, check out Bloodaxe’s version of Briggflatts: An Autobiography by Basil Bunting (ebook: https://www.amazon.com/Briggflatts-Basil-Bunting-ebook/dp/B01HDIYBA6) for some cool examples, complete with two recordings of Bunting reading it; it’s the edition I referred to in writing my master’s thesis (as well as for writing this article).