Content area
Full text
RR 2015/303 The Word Rhythm Dictionary: A Resource for Writers, Rappers, Poets and Lyricists Timothy Polashek Rowman & Littlefield Lanham, MD and Plymouth 2014 xvii + 689 pp. ISBN 978 0 8108 8416 8 (print); ISBN 978 0 8108 8417 5 (e-book) £47.95 $72 (print); £49.95 $72.99 (e-book)
Keywords English language, Poetry
Review DOI 10.1108/RR-08-2015-0193
After my many years' association with Reference Reviews, I really thought I had seen it all; dictionaries on just about every subject under the sun, rhyming dictionaries, picture dictionaries, reverse dictionaries, historical dictionaries and all the rest. Surely there is no room for anything new on top of those? Wrong as it turns out. The Introduction to this book is headed "A new kind of dictionary" and is certainly something I have never seen attempted before. Studies of the rhythm of prose or poetry in literary works are not uncommon; I recall on my first visit to Paris on an educational trip, the most interesting lecture we received was on the rhythm of the prose in Flaubert's Madame Bovary, complete with lines (not quite musical notation) expressing the flow and rhythm of the sentences; then followed my studies of Latin and Greek poetry, particularly Homer and Virgil, where metre and rhythm were fundamental to any discussion of poetic style.
This dictionary, however, does not cover line or sentence structure but is a dictionary of...