In that Rhymes and Reasons are songs, not poems, I’ve left them in the accepted patterns necessary to set them to music. There may be some repetition but rare is the song sang in its entirety without repeating verses or choruses especially, what is now considered the chorus. The earlier songs were primarily AABA or ABAC patterns which were the norm back then. As patterns evolved into the more contemporary verse-chorus mode, I’d suspect that happened because repetition of the chorus allows for more rousing concert finales in which audience might be tempted to sing along.
In Why Lyrics Last, the internationally acclaimed critic Brian Boyd turns an evolutionary lens on the subject of lyric verse. He finds that lyric making, though it presents no advantages for the species in terms of survival and reproduction, is “universal across cultures because it fits constraints of the human mind.” An evolutionary perspective— especially when coupled with insights from aesthetics and literary history—has much to tell us about both verse and the lyrical impulse. Boyd places the writing of lyrical verse within the human disposition “to play with pattern,” and in an extended example he uncovers the many patterns to be found within Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Shakespeare’s bid for readership is unlike that of any sonneteer before him: he deliberately avoids all narrative, choosing to maximize the openness of the lyric and demonstrating the power that verse can have when liberated of story. In eschewing narrative, Shakespeare plays freely with patterns of other kinds: words, images, sounds, structures; emotions and moods; argument and analogy; and natural rhythms, in daily, seasonal, and life cycles. In the originality of his stratagems, and in their sheer number and variety, both within and between sonnets, Shakespeare outdoes all competitors. A reading of the Sonnets informed by evolution is primed to attend to these complexities and better able to appreciate Shakespeare’s remarkable gambit for immortal fame.
Performing Advice from Broadway's Premiere Audition Coach Bob Marks has spent more than 90,000 hours coaching singers, including cast members of nearly every current Broadway musical, cabaret performers, students winning positions at prestigious university programs, and actors of all ages. For more than four decades, singers from all over the world have turned to Bob Marks to hone their voices and nail auditions, including stars such as Lea Michele, Sarah Jessica Parker, Britney Spears, Ariana Grande, Nikki M. James, Laura Bell Bundy, Ashley Tisdale, and Debbie Gibson. In this book, Bob provides 88 short, simple steps for successful singing auditions, including how to: Build confidence and presence Care for your voice and use it effectively Select music which enhances your unique style Put your best musical foot forward in any situation "Bob was instrumental in helping me book the role of Ed the Hyena and the covers of Timon and Zazu in The Lion King."-Wayne Pyle, Broadway Performer "If it weren't for Bob, my daughter would never landed the role of Gretl in NBC's live production of The Sound of Music." -Tara Kennedy, Broadway Performer "I wish I knew half of what Bob Marks knows about music, nuance, performance, and industry standards." - Elizabeth Lecoanet, International Voice Specialist "An invaluable resource for performers of any age. This is a concise, simple, and pragmatic book that I can recommend to my students." -Denise Simon, Author of Parenting in the Spotlight "Bob Marks knows how to help you be your best-prepared self in the audition room.!" -Stephanie Lynne Mason, Broadway Performer
In Surprised by Sound, Roi Tartakovsky shows that the power of rhyme endures well into the twenty-first century even though its exemplary usages may differ from traditional or expected forms. His work uncovers the mechanics of rhyme, revealing how and why it remains a vital part of poetry with connections to large questions about poetic freedom, cognitive and psychoanalytic theories, and the accidental aspects of language. As a contribution to studies of sound in poetry, Surprised by Sound takes on two central questions: First, what is it about the structure of rhyme that makes it such a potent and ongoing source of poetic production and extrapoetic fascination? Second, how has rhyme changed and survived in the era of free verse, whose prototypical poetry is as hostile to poetic meter as it is to the artificial sound of rhyme, including the sound of rhythmic thumping at the end of every line? In response, Tartakovsky theorizes a new category of rhyme that he terms “sporadic.” Since it is not systematized or expected, sporadic rhyme can be a single, strongly resounding rhyme used suddenly in a free verse poem. It can also be an internal rhyme in a villanelle or a few scattered rhymes unevenly distributed throughout a longer poem that nevertheless create a meaningful cluster of words. Examining usages across varied poetic traditions, Tartakovsky locates sporadic rhyme in sources ranging from a sixteenth-century sonnet to a nonsensical, practically unperformable piece by Gertrude Stein and a 2007 MoveOn.org ad in the New York Times. With careful attention to the soundscapes of poems, Surprised by Sound demonstrates that rhyme’s enduring value lies in its paradoxical and unstable nature as well as its capacity for creating poetic, cognitive, and psychic effects.
