Highly recommending this excellent book for poets and college students by Willard R. Espay. "Words to Rhyme With" is another one of his dozen or so books. It's a book for poets and college students whom need a referral book for making up their own lyrics, verses and rhymes. Samples of his poems and rhyming words are the whole content of this book.

This book contains about two hundred poems of Mr. Espy's. He used them to illustrate the different kinds of poems and styles throughout the book. From the very simple to the very complicated. He uses a play of words. The way he writes his poems and the abstruse words found in this book are educational, enlightening and, melliloquy, especially when rhymed.

Some of Mr. Espy's poem in this book include: "Was Bacchus A Boil Vexing Jupiter's Thigh?" which comes under the classification of Villanelle style. "To A Critic" is considered a Roundel style of poem. "When The Whole Blamed Caboodle Has Gone Up The Spout" is a Ballade with a Double Refrain. "Ode to An Elevator" from Greece, The Ode, which is unrhymed.

After a chapter explaining about the different kinds of poems, the book goes into single rhymes, double rhymes and then triple rhymes. These pages are three colums across to make it easy to read.

The book ends with a glossary of about one hundred pages. The words listed here are ones found in the rhyming section that are a little on the rare and unusual side that are not found in all dictionaries. Mr. Espy made this list up as he was going along and writing this book. This book is one of over a dozen books Mr. Espy wrote.

Mr. Espy used several reference books, himself, to put this book together which included: "The New Rhyming Dictionary and Poet's Handbook" (1931) by Burges Johnson, The Complete Rhyming Dictionary and Poet's Craft Book (1934) by Clement Wood, "The Poet's Manual and Rhyming Dictionary" (England 1966) by Frances Stillman, "The Penguin Rhyming Dictionary" (1985) by Rosalind Fergusson, "Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words" by Josefa Heifetz Byrne, "Hobble-de-hoy, The Word Game for Geniuses" by Elizabeth Seymour and "Words" by Paul
Dickson.

Here, in this book, is where you will find rhyming words like "flavicomous" and "auricomous" which refer to yellow hair and golden hair or "anichnogram" and "pelmatogram" which has to do with a footprint. Their definitions are listed in the glossary in the back of the book.

This book was copyrighted in 1986 by Willard R. Espy. It was first published in hardcover by Facts on File Publications. The paperback book was published in 1988 by the First Owl Book Edition, Henry Holt and Company, New York, New York. The printed cover price of this book was $22.50

My son borrowed this book off of me when he was going to college, for his English class. He even showed it to his English teacher. I came into possession of it when I found it listed in one of the book clubs I belonged to about ten years or so ago. I'm not a poet, but, I added it to my library of books. I find it very interesting myself.







Recommended: Yes