Next week I start a new semester at Rosemont College. I’m taking three courses: Novel Craft (basically everything one needs to know to write a novel without the topic, characters, setting, plot or theme — it’s like a having a cookbook but no access to a grocery store); Literary Theory (a discussion of all the ways people can be involved in the pursuit of writing excellent and important literature without actually writing any literature); and my thesis which is going to be a book of poetry.

I started studying a dictionary of poetical terms and I’ve found 45 different terms related to the word “rhyme”: amphisbaenic rhyme, analyzed rhyme, apocopated rhyme, approximate rhyme, backward rhyme, beginning rhyme, broken rhyme, caudate rhyme, chain rhyme or chain verse, cross rhyme, crossed rhyme or interlaced rhyme, double rhyme, echo rhyme, embryonic rhyme, external rhyme, eye rhyme, feminine rhyme, full rhyme, head rhyme, historical rhyme, identical rhyme, imperfect rhyme, initial rhyme, interlaced rhyme, internal rhyme, ironic rhyme, leonine rhyme, light rhyme, linked rhyme, masculine rhyme, multiple rhyme, near rhyme, nursery rhyme, oblique rhyme, part rhyme, partial rhyme, perfect rhyme, polysyllabic rhyme, rich rhyme, sight rhyme, slant rhyme, suspended rhyme, synthetic rhyme, triple rhyme, vowel rhyme.

By the time I’m done with my thesis I will know what every one of these things are.

Here’s the thing though: rhyme has almost nothing to do with the type of poetry I write. My poetry almost never has rhymes, but maybe one of these 45 different types will give me a chance. Anyway, thought it was cool. Hope someone out there finds it useful.