Rhyme

Boland uses full or exact rhyme (rhymes in which the two words have different initial consonants followed by identical stressed vowel sounds) as well as slant or half rhyme (only the final consonant sounds of the two words are similar, but the preceding vowel and consonant sounds are different) to differing effects in the poem. In several sections, she uses exact rhyme to emphasize the statement being expressed, as in the first stanza with "life" and "knife" and in the sixth and seventh stanzas with "time" and "crime." These instances of exact rhyme impart a sense of boldness and closure, which invigorate the statements about the role of women throughout history. Exact rhymes also serve to make the poem cohere as a whole, since Boland repeats rhymes (and, in fact, the same words) across many stanzas, as with the repetition of "same" and "flame" in stanzas 9 and 10. These...