This doesn’t mean you need a grand idea or big philosophical point. A couplet could describe a flower, crack a joke, or explore your feelings on something.
You don’t necessarily want to end on a difficult-to-rhyme word like “orange” or “knickerbocker,” even if they are exciting words. The best poets use language in fresh, exciting, and innovative ways. While you could find a lot of rhymes for “you” or “me,” ask yourself if there is a more unique word to choose.
While most rhymes occur on the last word, they don’t have to. Check out, for example, this couplet from Dr. Suess: “Fox in socks, our game is done, sir. / Thank you for a lot of fun, sir. " You may decide to rewrite your first line if you have no good rhymes – this is just part of the process.
If you leave it open, the rhyme is subtle and feels less like a song, since you read right over the rhyming word, but still get the musical quality. If you place a comma or period after the first line, you generally get a more old-fashioned, song-like rhyme. Talented poets will often mix and match open and closed couplets, such as in Sir Edmund Spenser’s “Mother Hubbard’s Tale”. For a master course in open couplets, read Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.
If you’re comfortable with poetic meter, try and make the two lines as close as possible with stresses and syllables. If not, just focus on making them sound lovely.
In general, couplets give a poem a light, playful, and sing-songy feel in modern poetry Appropriately, many modern song lyrics are written in couplets. There are some that feel like poetry
If you’re new to poetic meter, iambic sounds a bit like a heartbeat (daDUM, daDUM, daDUM), where the syllables alternate between unstressed and unstressed when you say them (for example, words like “exIST,” “aWAY,” or “preDICT,” where your voice goes up at the end). Iambic pentameter is all about rhythm, and while it is rarely used today, you should be aware of it for school. Pentameter means five “feet” per line, since penta = “five. " A foot is a specific combination of stressed and unstressed syllables. Every sonnet Shakespeare wrote was written in iambic pentameter. Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” is modern example of iambic pentameter at high speed. [5] X Research source
A sonnet is made up of alternating couplets (line one rhymes with line three, line two with line four, etc. ), but the ending is a classic couplet. The switch from alternating rhyme to a couplet highlights a change in perspective, tone, or theme as well as a change in form. Very often, this couplet surprises the reader, provides the moral or point of the poem, or otherwise makes the poem turn on its head.
You will find that the first line is repeated twice (“Woke up this morning, to a knock upon my door. . . . I woke up this morning, with a knock upon my door), and then the second line comes in with a chord change (“And I said “hello Satan, I believe it’s time to go” – Robert Johnson). In general, the second line contains a turn. That is, after the first line is repeated, the second line surprises the listener by changing expectations or swiveling the focus. Couplets are also common in many modern forms of music, and form the basis of many rock, rap, and pop lyrics.
