Why Do We Rhyme?

“Tell the truth and make it rhyme.”
~ John Lennon

“Today you are you! That is truer than true!
There is no one alive who is you-er than you!”
~ Dr. Seuss

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.
You’re on your own, and you know what you know.
And you are the guy who’ll decide where to go.”
~ Dr. Seuss

“Today was good. Today was fun.
Tomorrow is another one.”
~ Dr. Seuss

“No sooner had I stepp’d into these pleasures
Than I began to think of rhymes and measures:
The air that floated by me seem’d to say
‘Write! thou wilt never have a better day.”
~ John Keats

“Rhyme, that enslaved queen,
that supreme charm of our poetry,
that creator of our meter.”
~ Victor Hugo

“Constantly risking absurdity and death
whenever he performs above the heads of his audience,
the poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rhyme
to a high wire of his own making.”
~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.”
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“For poetry, he’s past his prime,
He takes an hour to find a rhyme;
His fire is out, his wit decayed,
His fancy sunk, his muse a jade.
I’d have him throw away his pen,
But there’s no talking to some men.”
~ Jonathan Swift

Why Do We Rhyme?

Why do we rhyme?
Is there a reason?

A time for rhyme –
a rhyming season?

Or, do we just rhyme
without rhyme or reason?

Ron’s audio recitation of “Why Do We Rhyme?”

Ron’s explanation of “Why Do We Rhyme?”

Dear Friends,

On first living alone after my midlife change of life, I experienced many noteworthy life-style and behavioral changes, which I attributed to samskaras from other less worldly lifetimes.

As a lawyer I had always preferred succinct legal writings, unlike other attorneys’ paradoxically prolix legal briefs, which suggested to me that they might be charging for their words, not just for their professional expertise.

So, after I began reading and writing about spiritual subjects, I continued to prefer succinct and sometimes epigrammatic communications. Thus my favorite SillySutras.com writings are mostly concise and pithy.

Before a midlife spiritual awakening I didn’t compose and rarely read  poetry.  But, thereafter, I spontaneously began writing spiritual songs and poetry. And instinctively I was drawn to whimsical rhyming, repeating, and alliterating – like Dr. Seuss. So I wondered about possible significance of my midlife poetic tendencies, and whether they had reemerged from other lifetimes.

The foregoing poem, “Why Do We Rhyme?”, was composed while I was whimsically wondering about my new rhyming tendencies. Perhaps the rhyming lines from famous poets which precede the poem can help us answer the poem’s rhetorical questions.

And maybe Jonathan Swift’s poem quoted above can help us explain why,

After years of living ascetically
and ‘waxing’ poetically,
Ron’s still rhyming alive,
though ‘waning’ at age eighty five.

In all events, I hope you’ll enjoy this posting. May it help inspire ever more happiness in our lives.

And so may it be!

Ron Rattner