Poetry Techniques: The Implied Rhyme
“With your feet on the air
and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
and there’s nothing in it
and you’ll ask yourself
Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?
Where is my mind?”
-from Where is my mind? by the Pixies
An Implied Rhyme refers to the technique of creating a natural rhyme and then denying it to the reader, utilizing an expected conceit of the form in order to subvert expectations for effect. In the example above, from the song “Where is my mind?” by the Pixies, the mind almost automatically fills in the word “around” after “try this trick and spin it” as a natural rhyme to the word “ground,” which ends the previous line. Instead, you get a tacked on “yeah” in its place. This produces an effect of jarring the reader (or in this case listener) out of a complacency in form, acting as a pre-punctuation point that forces an added attention and awareness to the lines which follow. The brilliance in this particular case is that it is this very denied rhyme which is then utilized to produce a rhyme between the words “spin it” and the words “in it” two lines down. This technique of denying a rhyme where it is expected to be and then shifting to provide a more unnatural rhyme elsewhere, along with simply replacing the more expected “in the air” with “on the air” in the first line, creates the effect of producing an added sense of mental imbalance within the listener which mimics the very state of the one who is speaking.
Videos
Where is my Mind? - Pixies Version
Where is my Mind? - Cover Version (clearer lyrics)
Bonus: In Heaven, Everything is Fine
Pixies cover of the song from David Lynch’s Eraserhead
