Towards a theory of sporadic rhyming

A surprising amount of 20th-century (and earlier) English-language poetry employs rhyme, but not the rhyme we normally think of, which marks the end of the line in metrical poetry, but a kind of half-intentional half-accidental rhyme that can appear anywhere within the text. This type of rhyming, which I term ‘sporadic’ and distinguish from ‘systematic,’ has illuminating potential as it relies on, but also departs from traditional rhyme functions. As such, it asks for a new theorization. In this essay I elaborate the core characteristics of sporadic rhyming, and then exemplify and qualify these through a series of readings.