Because I Could Not Stop To Rhyme

At various times in the past, I have featured bits and pieces from Judy Jo Small’s book “Positive as Sound, Emily Dickinson’s Rhyme.”  I thumbed through the book again, and for the next few days I’ll share a few of Small’s comments about specific poems.

On the bottom of page 128 of her book, Small said, “The Dickinson poem most heavily laden with full rhyme, though, is probably this one, composed in otherwise conventional quatrains,” and I was completely surprised by the poem displayed at the top of page 129.  It wasn’t what I expected at all.

Now granted, I don’t know off the top of my head which of Dickinson’s poems is the “most heavily laden with full rhyme,” but I didn’t expect this one.

Before I get to the poem that Small singled out, let me say that I – for fun – ran a Google-search on “which poem by Emily Dickinson uses the most rhyme,” and the AI-response, the first time I ran the search, was “Because I could not stop for Death.” 

Say what?

The AI generator noted the ABCB rhyme scheme of the poem, but really – that’s about it. The poem actually employs only a few traditional rhymes, and the end-of-line rhymes are as follows:  me/immortality, away/civility, ring/sun, chill/Tulle, ground/ground, and day/eternity.  Not what I would call “heavily laden.” 

Later, I ran the search a second time and got this: “While it's hard to definitively say which one absolutely uses the most rhyme due to Dickinson's unique style, "I'm Nobody! Who Are you?" by Emily Dickinson is often cited for its relatively regular rhyme scheme.”

Seriously?  The poem has two stanzas, and the end rhymes are too/know and frog/bog.

I ran the search a third (and final) time, and this time I got, “While many of Emily Dickinson's poems utilize rhyme, one example of a poem that features a strong and frequent use of rhyme is ‘I dwell in Possibility.’” 

Again, not a strong contender for the poem “most heavily laden with full rhyme.”  The rhymes in that three-stanza poem are prose/doors, eye/sky, and this/paradise.

By the way, I checked the site for the Emily Dickinson Museum just to see if they happened to mention a poem (or more) that was “heavily laden” with rhyme.  Their page  (HERE) “Major Characteristics of Dickinson’ Poetry” includes a section entitled “Meter and Rhyme,” and the page focuses on the poem “I’ll tell you how the sun rose.”  There are 16 lines in that poem, and the rhymes in the ABCB pattern are time/ran, begun/sun, stile/while, and gray/away.

The museum’s commentary includes this info: “Slant rhyme, or no rhyme at all, is quite common in modern poetry, but it was less often used in poetry written by Dickinson’s contemporaries. In this poem, for example, we would expect ‘time’ to rhyme with ‘ran.’”

Hmm…I think they meant to say, “we would NOT expect ‘time’ to rhyme with ‘ran,’” so I emailed them to ask.

Okay, so back to Judy Jo Small’s book and her assertion about “The Dickinson poem most heavily laden with full rhyme.”  Any guesses as to which poem that might be?  I’ll post it tomorrow.