Rhyming that mongrel English

The current issue of Rattle also features a conversation between Editor-in-Chief Alan Fox and Robert Pinsky in which Pinsky refers to “this mongrel language you and I are speaking.” Asked to elaborate, he says:

As I understand it, the island [England] was invaded by many,many different groups. When the Germanic-speaking people of the Viking-like people conquered the Celtic-speaking people, drove them into the bushes, they also intermarried with them and developed a language they could use together. When you’re going to enslave people and fight them and rape them and marry them and exploit them and go into partnerships of different kinds with them, you develop a common tongue. And those enslaving raiders in turn had the sh1t kicked out of them by Scandinavians or Angles or Geats who raided and did all those same things, enslaved and raped and developed and missionaried and married and civilized and beat up and all the other various things that human beings can do to one another. And that affected the language again. And centuries later to those already-mongrelized series of conquerors and conquered came the Romans. And centuries after that, the Frenchies. So all these layered strands produced in the island an unusually large vocabulary; the English dictionary is much fatter than the Italian or the French. This is fundamental. Some French people have trouble believing that we know the differences among “wiggle,” “joggle,” “jiggle,” “toggle,” “wriggle.” Toggle is binary. Wriggle is kind of sinuous. Waggle suggests something flatter. Jiggle is rapid. Jangle is more sonic. And we speakers of English do know what we mean by all those iggle-words. Our tongue is quite rich in synonyms and nuances—though not in rhymes. Sometimes people come to English from another language and they think they’re going to force it to be rhyme-rich by using the synonyms: and the result is laughable, terrible, because we are very sensitive to idiom, in our tongue. To a certain extent, we have idiom instead of structure. . .

Guess you might call Pinsky a rhyme cynic. Carol Rumens of The Guardian’s books blog, on the other hand, might be described as a rhyme enthusiast:

Rhyme works excitingly in the English language, when it works at all, because distinct etymologies so often resonate in the chime. When “straight” meets “circumambulate” the compass needle spins, not only because opposite meanings are implied, but because the Old English word has travelled so different a route from that of the Latin to be here. Each word is like a merchant, strangely-dressed, suffused by otherness of climate, custom, style, but ready to trade.

This passage is from a discussion of the poem of the week, in this instance Jean Bleakney’s “Improvisation,” a charming piece with roughly 47 “ate” rhymes and does not become laughable. It’s worth a read.

Me, I think successful rhyme in English can be much more exciting than in languages like French and Italian where the rhyming is easy.

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Update: I am remiss in failing to mention that Robert Peake’s poem “Road Sign on Interstate 5, San Diego, California” won an honorable mention in the 2008 Rattle Poetry Prize competition.

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