Crossing the Bar, Yo

A lot of folks are familiar with a poem called "Crossing the Bar." It was written by this gent:

Check that hipster facial hair.

     Alfred, Lord Tennyson was Poet Laureate for Queen Victoria, so you know he was a formal guy, in his life and in his work. "Crossing The Bar" is typical of his verse: every accent is in place, every rhyme is perfect. "Crossing The Bar" begins:

                                                         Sunset and evening star,
                                                                And one clear call for me!
                                                        And may there be no mourning of the bar
                                                                When I put out to sea...

     It's beautiful stuff. By "crossing the bar," Tennyson meant passing from the river of life to the ocean of what comes after life. But these days, in certain poetic circles, the phrase means something else. Just ask this poet:

Lo, the bard hath flow.

     That's Rakim, a very influential rapper. If you don't think rappers deserve to be considered as poets, here's a video to change your mind.

 

     In this video, we learn that early rappers developed what could be called (if one were feeling tweedy) rap prosody. Instead of building their lines and verses around the pulses of spoken language, they devised methods for playing with and against the musical beat of backing tracks. They progressed from simple rhymes to complex rhyme schemes. And so on. 

     Sometimes they came up with new terms for old poetic techniques. Look at this from Rakim:

     But he's kicking it 'cause it ain't no half stepping

     The party is live, the rhyme can't be kept in - side

     It needs erupting, just like a volcano

     It ain't the everyday style or the same old rhyme

     Check out the second line. You can see that "kept in" is meant to rhyme with "half stepping," but the word "inside" spills into the next musical bar. The sense of what he's saying can't be contained by the form of the phrase -- and he's describing this technique as he's using it. Rappers call this "crossing the bar"; Milton would have called it enjambment. By any name, it is (to paraphrase Shakespeare) pretty dope.