[TZtrDuso]

Pretty cool.

[Nmoitmzr]

Oh come on, it's a harmless piece of geekery.

[opelayday]

Anything you say, Sheldon.

[capeAngedlelp]

It's funny because I watched the new 21 Jump Street movie several weeks ago and thought the chemistry poems were strange, completely having forgotten I wrote one, too.

[Vemnagelignc]

Let your haters be your motivators.

[usacomm]

Hater and motivator?...yes, they do rhyme, unless you go out of your way to pronounce the last syllable of "motivator" like the word "or." Perhaps that's a Philly thing.

Construction/function is technically a feminine rhyme (last syllable only), which sounds lazy and weak to my ear, but if you insist, fine. "First" and "reverse," however, are not even close, and if you're going to go for simple alliterations you should do it consistently. Doing one and then the other just makes it look like you're trying, and failing, to rhyme. Especially when you seem to give up the game entirely around the halfway point, before doing an actual rhyme in the last couplet.

Also, there's no bloody meter. No, varying the meter (beyond perhaps one or two syllables to prevent monotony) is not a "stylistic choice." It's wanton disrespect for aesthetics perpetrated in the name of novelty. The second-to-last line is almost twice the length of the last. That, sir, is an atrocity against the English language. And the randomly varying rhythm...grr.

[meteeratymn]

What part of struction and function do you not understand that beyond sharing -tion, they share the same vowel (u!) and the same hard k consonant in a single syllable?

Jeez let's see... a pair of syllables that share the same vowel sound and the same consonant sound... yeah that can't possibly be a rhyme

It's not a perfect rhyme but it's a valid imperfect rhyme one level above mere assonance and consonance.

[bunkalapa]

Elok, whatever you do, don't read the libretto for Nixon In China -- your head will explode.

[wbeachcomber]

And verse and first also rhyme!

Let's look at the IPA for those words, shall we?

Verse:
vɜrs

First:
fɜrst

Well what do you know? ɜrs!

Hey and guess what, the consonant sounds for f and v are quite similar, sometimes even indistinguishable in everyday speech.

Looks like the only difference in sound is that verse doesn't end in the t sound that first does. Well, that difference is a good thing. Otherwise, it would sound like you're just repeating the same word!

[Jwskwhdo]

Construction:
kənˈstrʌkʃən

Function:
ˈfʌŋkʃən

Well what do you know? ʌkʃən and ʌŋkʃən are pretty damn similar. In fact, the only difference is function has that 'n' sound to differentiate them but the vowels and consonant sounds are otherwise identical!

[LoohornePharp]

Looks like the only difference in sound is that verse doesn't end in the t sound that first does. Well, that difference is a good thing. Otherwise, it would sound like you're just repeating the same word!

They're also the reason why that's not a rhyme. "Reverse" rhymes with "rehearse," "worse," "hearse," what-have-you. I will grant you "construction/function" as feminine rhyme, although, again, that kind of feminine rhyme trying to be masculine is lame and unpleasant. But if they don't even end with the same sound, they are not rhymes at all. They're fine examples of assonance and consonance, I'm sure, but those aren't rhymes. They're alliteration. And they make it sound like you're trying to rhyme, possibly while hammered, and failing.

[cyslespitocop]

This isn't about this piece of ****ing **** high school poem about biology!

It is as far as I'm concerned. That kind of ugliness isn't funny, it's written tubgirl to anyone with any sense of rhythm, rhyme, meter or good taste. I don't care about your insistence that abortive half-rhymes are "valid," whatever that's supposed to mean.

[Assungusa]

And it's ****ing hilarious how you talk about meter and rhythm when you DESPISE the fact that rap is necessarily reliant on meter and rhythm (it's over a ****ing beat! Rappers literally HAVE TO use meter and rhythm or they'll be off the strict metronome of a beat!)... calling it herky-jerky. What sense does that ****ing make?

You're full of ****, Elok.

Rappers freely violate meter and rhythm, at least in the poetic sense. Look where you put those commas--they're breaking up the flow of the work, making you stutter in weird places as you read it so you sound like you're doing a half-assed Porky Pig impersonation. Likewise the meter; the lines vary in length, again apparently at random. Rappers do the same things, easily, without having to worry about breaking from the very simple, monotonous background beats they use.

[Evdokia]

I write something like this as part of a verse... I've annotated all the rhyming sets. Yet I guess not a single one of these is a proper rhyme in Elok's bizarro world despite shared syllable sounds.

She's got my heart aching1 with her smiles2 and sunshine3
Time4 wasting1, mind4 racing1 while2 my tongue's tied3
They say love lies3,
But it's me that I'm being dishonest with5
trying to be all calm with it5,
portray the proper ambience6
Cause women want a man with self-confidence6
But every time I try to be smooth,
I get lost in self-consciousness6,
Making promises6 with myself7,
I insist I got to get some help7...


And a valid pronunciation of ambience is with the soft a as in father. look it up.

[Jenisoisy]

So we don't disagree about the poem. If you want to call alliteration rhyme, well, have fun with that. I mixed up masculine and feminine, after all. All I'm saying is that it's impossible for me to find that horrible POS funny. It's terrible in so many ways that it seems you were actively trying to make it bad. And it's bad in many of the same ways rap is bad.

[mikefertynnz]

Yes, I do. It's what Shakespeare used, it's frequently used because it matches the natural stresses of English conversation, and it's not what I'm talking about. The problem is a matter of arbitrary pauses, generally caused by the practice of internal rhyme, and line length. I'll grant you that I don't listen to rap much, so maybe they don't all do it.

[BebopVT]

You're going to have to give me an example. I don't understand what you mean. Unless you mean what DJ's used to do where they would scratch through vocals and make a stuttering sound? But that was never prevalent on anything beyond some hooks and breaks.

[poekfpojoibien]

Construction/function is technically a feminine rhyme (last syllable only), which sounds lazy and weak to my ear, but if you insist, fine.

Whoah, hold on there. You've got it backwards. It's masculine rhymes that are one syllable only.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminine_rhyme
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...feminine-rhyme
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masculine_rhyme

But I agree that Al's poem is annoying.

[imporesweemo]

Elok are you talking about something like this?



Obviously, this guy is doing it all with his mouth but what happens is that in the early 90's, it was popular for DJ's to take rap vocals and scratch them to produce that stuttering effect.

This can't be what you're talking about, right?

[SDorothy28]

Al, I'm saying almost all rap, including the one example you posted that I started listening to (the one that talked about pulling wool and NASDAQ heart attacks and whatever), sounds stuttery and annoying to me. I never stopped to analyze it closely, but it sounded like the line lengths and pauses were somewhat arbitrary. Now you tell me that's not the case, and so I suspect it's mostly a matter of overemphasizing syllables or something. Honestly, there's no way I'm going to listen to more rap to figure out what exactly is bugging me, so let's just give it up. I hate your poem, you think it's bad but tolerate it like an ugly stepson, good enough.