New Rhyming Dictionary and Poets' Handbook

Burges Johnson offers a basic rhyming manual for poets. The first 65 pages or so gives examples of various forms of meter and fixed styles of poetry. So if you wish to remember what trochaic hexameter looks like, you can find it here. The examples are of standard European lyric poems: Sonnet, Ballade, Chant Royal, Villanelle, Limerick, Rondel, Sestina, etc. There are no examples of Asian styles like Haiku. The rhyming dictionary is organized by vowel sounds with the most basic sounds like ATE, IN, OW, EAR listed first and then more complex combinations listed toward the end. The listings contain simple words, so the rhymes will not have unique combinations. But it is still a great start if you find yourself stuck after the third ATE (pate, mate, gate...). My main issue with the book is that it's a bit difficult to flip through. There are times where I will think a sound should be listed under OO and it's under EW. Also, because the simple sounds are seperated from the multi-syllable sounds, you'll have a break in the alphabetical listing. It requires a lot of flipping back and forth. All in all, it's a handy reference which saves time.

I do a lot of translation/versifying and this book is an incredible tool. Far from being a crutch, it opens the mind to new possibilites of rhyme, which, once internalized, can be called up from memory without looking back to the book. In short, this book TEACHES you versification skills through exposure to rhymes. It also contains an extensive discussion of rhyming form and technique with examples. A must have for the serious formalist.