Monorhyme
Monorhyme is a passage, stanza, or entire poem in which all lines have the same end rhyme.[1] The term "monorhyme" describes the use of one (mono) type of repetitious sound (rhyme). This is common in Arabic, Latin and Welsh work,[2] such as The Book of One Thousand and One Nights,[citation needed] e.g., qasida and its derivative kafi.
Some styles of monorhyme use the end of a poem's line to utilize this poetic tool. The Persian ghazal poetry style places the monorhyme before the refrain in a line.[citation needed] This is seen in the poem "Even the Rain" by Agha Shahid Aili:
- "What will suffice for a true-love knot? Even the rain?
- But he has bought grief's lottery, bought even the rain."
The monorhyme knot is introduced before the line’s refrain or pause. The corresponding rhyme bought is used in the next line. Although these are not the last words of the lines in the poem, monorhyme is incorporated in identical rhyme schemes in each line.
Example[edit]
An example of monorhyme is the poem "A Monorhyme for the Shower" by Dick Davis. This monorhyme has all the ending lines rhyming with the word "hair".
- A Monorhyme for the Shower
- Lifting her arms to soap her hair
- Her pretty breasts respond – and there
- The movement of that buoyant pair
- Is like a spell to make me swear
- Twenty odd years have turned to air;
- Now she’s the girl I didn’t dare
- Approach, ask out, much less declare
- My love to, mired in young despair.
- Childbearing, rows, domestic care
- All the prosaic wear and tear
- That constitute the life we share
- Slip from her beautiful and bare
- Bright body as, made half aware
- Of my quick, surreptitious stare,
- She wrings the water from her hair
- And turning smiles to see me there.[3]
There is also a monorhyme sung by Willy Wonka in the 1973 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, during the dark tunnel scene, with all lines ending with words rhyming with "owing".
See also[edit]
Sources[edit]
- ^ Greene, Roland, ed. (24 August 2017). "Monorhyme". The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (4th ed.). Princeton University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780190681173.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-691-15491-6 – via Oxford Reference.
- ^ "Monorhyme – literature". Encyclopedia Britannica. 1 September 1999. Retrieved 7 January 2023.
- ^ Davis, Dick (2001). A Monorhyme for the Shower. West Chester, Pa: Aralia Press.
- Cushman, Stephen; Clare Cavanagh; Jahan Ramazani, Paul Rouzer (2012). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (4th ed.). Princeton University Press. pp. 898–899. ISBN 978-1-4008-4142-4.
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