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On Rhyme
In 1994 and 1995, new to writing Poetry (although not new to reading it), I studied---devoutly and intensely---the Poetry of one of America's greatest (and, presently, somewhat neglected) Poets, the academic scholar, J. V. Cunningham. I learned from him what real rhyme was: not in the vowel sounds only, but in the vowel sounds and the consenants that follow them in the syllable on which the rhyme is established. Not "brown mouse," or "town house," but "town brown" or "mouse house." I believed that this also applied to plurals: one would not rhyme "town" with "frowns." Both items should be singular or plural, but not mixed.
Imagine my shock to read, in the first stanza of the third section of T. S. Eliot's great Christian Poem, Ash Wednesday, a rhyme constructed out of "wears" and "despair." Since 1995, I have studiously avoided this kind of construction; and, back in my early days, it made for some difficulty in certain poems to keep the rhyme sounds in the perfect agreement advocated by Cunningham. But here is Eliot---the Possum---whom I hold in far greater esteem than even Cunningham, violating that rule about singularity and plurality in end-rhymes. I am not sure whether to laugh or cry.
As an aside: one of the few good things to arise from the first term of my undergrad freshman year (that ten week separation from Cerulean) was the recommendation to relinquish the study (and slavish imitation) of John Milton's poetry, and acquaint myself with the work of T. S. Eliot, beginning with The Waste Land, which my mentor in the English department recommended as a starting place. But, ever the contrary student, I chose to begin with Ash Wednesday, and I am mighty glad that I did. Reading that poem, I felt the full sweep of the Poet's conversion to Christianity in its Anglican form; I learned that blue, especially larkspur blue, was associated with the Blessed Virgin Mary. And I experienced the true Christian convert's quiet humility in expressing Faith---not the screech of some nut, running down an aisle in a Holy Rolling chapel to declare that they "had found Jay-zus." Jayzus is not in Ash Wednesday, but Jesus is; as Jayzus is not in respectful Christian Faith and Jesus most certainly is.
During that same term, which seemed to roll on forever until November 23rd came around, I did read The Waste Land, and was struck by the similtaneous disparity and similarity between the two poems. This, to me, was proof of Eliot's poetic genius; and that belief stayed with me for two more years. In 1979, and for a couple of decades after, I found Stevens more palitable. But, in my old age (and at this stage of life which I believe to be the last for me), it is Eliot's poems to which I turn for poetic sustenance and comfort.
Starward
