Synopses & Reviews
Rhyme's Challenge examines hip-hop's central verbal technique. At a time when print-based poets generally dismiss formal rhyme as old-fashioned and bookish, hip-hop artists show that the technique accommodates the most conspicuous conditions and symbols of contemporary life in a most suggestive manner: its products, technologies, and personalities. Instead of employing rhyme to maintain distance from contemporary culture, hip-hop artists characteristically use the technique to evoke the era's distinctive features. Their rhymes couple new inflections and objects of desire: "Escalade" and "got it made," "teenager" and "pager," and "bring us closer" and "a Halle Berry poster." Claiming as their own the very technique that contemporary print-based poets largely abandon, hip-hop artists show how various cultures and languages inspire and inform each other, as when they rhyme barrio slang with English, and the new identities that nicknames assert with the histories that place names mark.
Review
"A refreshingly serious and stimulating consideration of the formal tendencies of hip hop, Caplan's study infuses previous readings of hip hop's social concerns and historical situations with an exacting look at the pleasures and ramifications of rhyme."
--Yasmine Shamma, Poetry Magazine (Poetryfoundation.org)
"Ultimately, this is a hopeful book, one that sees flux as a positive and that sees analysis as an aid to enjoying art in all its facets and embodiments, from the commercial to the high brow...the increasing influence of hip hop will continue to challenge contemporary poets to see rhyme not as a stale technique but as an energizing one."
--Charlotte Pense, The Rumpus
"In Rhyme's Challenge David Caplan makes the case that rhymes live all around us and express themselves most evocatively in hip hop. He draws rich connections across music, culture, law, politics, science, and beyond. This is a rare kind of book: rooted but daring, learned but hip. It bears out Chuck D's claim that 'what counts is that the rhyme's / Designed to fill your mind.' Caplan cares deeply about rhyme; after reading this book, so will you." --Adam Bradley, author of Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop
"If you want to see the very traditional techniques of literary analysis prove their worth once more, if you want to see what those techniques can do for, with, and about Big Daddy Kane and Missy Elliot, Jay-Z and Lupe Fiasco, there's no substitute for the close reading and closer listening Caplan provides; and if you want to see what rap's techniques (not just its subjects; its techniques) contribute to present-day page-based poetry, from Major Jackson to D. A. Powell, Caplan's work is surely a, if not the, place to go. You might even go from it back to the rappers themselves." --Stephen Burt, author of Close Calls with Nonsense
"Intriguing...Makes a strong case that there is more to hip-hop in terms of artistry than is often granted." --The American Conservative
Synopsis
Rhyme's Challenge offers a concise, pithy primer to hip-hop poetics while presenting a spirited defense of rhyme in contemporary American poetry. David Caplan's stylish study examines hip-hop's central but supposedly outmoded verbal technique: rhyme. At a time when print-based poets generally dismiss formal rhyme as old-fashioned and bookish, hip-hop artists deftly deploy it as a way to capture the contemporary moment. Rhyme accommodates and colorfully chronicles the most conspicuous conditions and symbols of contemporary society: its products, technologies, and personalities. Ranging from Shakespeare and Wordsworth to Eminem and Jay-Z, David Caplan's study demonstrates the continuing relevance of rhyme to poetry -- and everyday life.
About the Author
David Caplan is Charles M. Weis Chair in English and Associate Director of Creative Writing at Ohio Wesleyan University. His previous books include
Questions of Possibility: Contemporary Poetry and Poetic Form and the poetry collection
In the World He Created According to His Will.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Because It Rhymes
Chapter 1
Reduced to Rhyme: Contemporary Doggerel
Chapter 2
The Art of Rhymed Insult
Chapter 3
Making Love in Mirrors: Hip-Hop Seduction Verse
Chapter 4
The Inheritors of Hip Hop: Reclaiming Rhyme
Conclusion
Notes
Index