Rhyme's Challenge: Hip Hop, Poetry, and Contemporary Rhyming Culture

By David Caplan

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195337131
• ISBN13: 9780195337136
• Release Date: February 2014
• Publisher: Oxford Univ PR
• Length: 190 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.2"