Rhyme's challenge : hip hop, poetry, and contemporary rhyming culture

Rhyme's Challenge offers a concise, pithy primer to hip-hop poetics while presenting a spirited defense of rhyme in contemporary American poetry.

David Caplan's stylish study examines hip-hop's central but supposedly outmoded verbal technique: rhyme.

At a time when print-based poets generally dismiss formal rhyme as old-fashioned and bookish, hip-hop artists deftly deploy it as a way to capture the contemporary moment.

Rhyme accommodates and colorfully chronicles the most conspicuous conditions and symbols of contemporary society: its products, technologies, and personalities.

Ranging from Shakespeare and Wordsworth to Eminem and Jay-Z, David Caplan's study demonstrates the continuing relevance of rhyme to poetry-and everyday life.