This week's topic: Cities.
Have you ever wanted to write a poem about your undying hatred for Los Angeles? Felt a need to express your passion for the urban lifestyle in a ballad? Or just wanted an opportunity to explain your metaphysical hypothesis about the similarity between the concept of 'city' and the colour purple in an aesthetic manner? Then this is the week for you.
This week's topic is intentionally broad again, and I'll accept almost any poem. It doesn't matter if you write about an actual or a fictional place, or just write about a guy going about his business in a city-like setting. As long as your topic has something to do with urbanity, or some very vague connection with city-life, you're good to go.
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This week's optional requirement: Incorporate a form of rhyme in your poem.
As I mentioned last week, one of the basics of classic poetry (apart from metre) is rhyme. In fact, rhyming seems to be ingrained in our language(s) to such a degree that we grow up with it from a very young age (you could for example think about nursery rhymes). Nevertheless, it might be useful to take a look at the different forms of rhyme that are often used within poetry.
If you ask someone about what they associate with (stereotypical) poetry, their answer will probably include some version of the word End Rhyme?. Basically, end rhyme means that the last word/sound of a line rhymes with a word/sound of another line in the poem. For example, an end-rhyming stanza for this week's prompt could be:
'Tis a great and lasting pity,
Now I moved to New York City,
That my phone will have no bars.
In those smelly subway cars.
Now it's usually easier to find a rhyme for a word that ends in a stressed syllable. In this case, bars and cars have only one syllable and are plurals, but words like a-far and bi-zarre could also rhyme with car and bar. This type of rhyme with words that end of stressed syllables is called masculine rhyme.
However, in the first two lines of the example above, pi-ty and ci-ty rhyme, but they both have two syllables, whereby their first syllable is stressed. This is called feminine rhyme, and it's sometimes a bit harder to do because we generally only recognise words as rhyming in these cases when both words have a similar ending, and their stressed syllables rhyme. For example, most people wouldn't consider the words 'piety' (pi-e-ty) and 'city' (ci-ty) to rhyme, even though they have similar endings.
Of course, if you can make the last words of the lines rhyme, why not consider making words within the same line rhyme? This is called Internal Rhyme, and could for example be used to emphasise a certain rhythm or metre in your poem. An example for this week's prompt could be:
Now with a cry, a homeless guy
Asked for a place to stay.
I popped my collar, threw a dollar
And ran the hell away.
The internal rhymes above are bolded, and the end rhymes italicised. Easy enough, right?
The last thing I want to discuss this week are so-called Slant Rhymes. These are often called some other name, and there's plenty of different forms of them, but they all have in common that they use words that almost rhyme, but not perfectly. For example, I could submit something that looks like this:
The woman that I thought I loved,
Kept silent as away I moved
From out this desolate, rural wild
Into a larger, urban world.
In the above example 'loved' and 'moved' look like they rhyme, as they're written almost exactly the same, but are pronounced quite differently. (This is called eye rhyme, for those interested.) Similarly, the consonants in 'wild' and 'world' are nearly the same, but they still don't rhyme because their different vowels make them sound too different. (This is called consonant rhyme) Traditionally speaking, slant rhyme is sort of frowned upon in high-brow poetry. However, I'm not expecting you to write high-brow poetry, and slant rhyme can be quite entertaining if used correctly, so do whatever you want with it.
So, for the purpose of this exercise, all you need to remember is:
End Rhyme: a. End of the word, which is also the stressed syllable. (Masculine rhyme)
b. End of the word + last stressed syllable. (Feminine rhyme)
Internal Rhyme: Rhymes within the same line.
Slant Rhyme: Almost rhymes, but not quite right.
In order to fulfil the optional requirement, you only have to use some form of rhyme, somewhere in your poem. I'd advise a rhyming scheme, but that's not required at all, and is completely up to you.
Have fun writing!
