Rhyme ties together a poem, giving it a structure through interlocking sounds that amplifies its meaning. Most of Bishop’s poems follow a clear narrative that leads the eye easily down the page to the end of the poem. But upon second reading the rhyme scheme begins to emerge. Her poems often use unusual or unpredictable rhyme schemes. They include both pure and slant rhymes, and they don’t always follow the same pattern from stanza to stanza. One element I see again and again is the repetition of sound throughout the body of the poem, not just within a single couplet, tercet, or quatrain. This global repetition without a set pattern acts like embroidery thread to sew the poem together with sound, but in an almost subliminal manner.
Bishop, Elizabeth. Collected Poems: 1927-1979. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984.
Mayes, Frances. The Discovery of Poetry. New York: Harcourt, 2001.
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