Finally ! Color-Coded Rhyme

As my regular readers may recall, rhyme has been a carrier of Truth to me since childhood.  So I love poetry that uses lots of rhyme and slant rhyme.  Currently I am reading Kay Ryan's latest: The Best of It.  Here are a couple of rhyme-bunctious poems from the book with the rhymes and slant rhymes, same sounds and similar sounds linked using my own color-coding system (patent pending).

GRAZING HORSES (page 166)

Sometimes the

green pasture

of the mind

tilts abruptly.

The grazing horses

struggle crazily

for purchase

on the frictionless

nearly verticle

surface.  Their

furniture-fine

legs buckle

on the incline,

unhorsed by slant

they weren't

designed to climb

and can't.


CHART (page 254)
There is a big
figure, your age,
crawling, then
standing, now
beginning to bend
as he crosses
the stage.  Or
she.  A blurred
and generalized
projection of you
and me.  For a
long time it seems
as remote
from the self
as the ape chart
where they rise up
and walk into man.
And then it seems
the realer part.

The Persuasive Power of Rhyme

N-o spells "no" was my first spelling lesson in Kindergarten. After recess, as we lined up to return to our desks, some of the kids had a short, but lively, discussion of the morning's lesson. One clever boy extrapolated from N-o spells "no" to N-s spells "yes." Several of his friends echoed his conclusion. Of course! N-s spells "yes." The logic was unimpeachable, but not to my mother, who tried unsuccessfully to convince me it was wrong. That's what we learned in school! I said.