There is one major category of rhyme I have not covered already in this series, and I shall now treat it. That rhyme is slant rhyme, and it falls neatly between the non-rhyme of eye rhyme and true rhyme. That said, it is still difficult to define, because the key point of slant rhyme is that it involves what is almost but not quite actual rhyme. Typically this is done by the change of a single consonant: n for m, b for p and v, and so on. There are technical terms for the types of consonants that work this way, but since the writing of poetry is not the composition of technical treatises, but rather a contingent process of writing words that sound right together, it is most useful to simply use one's mental ear when writing. Vowels can also be switched, although more rarely (and switching both generally results in simply non-rhyme): set and sit (in certain accents) are close enough, for instance.
The use of slant rhyme in sonnets should be minimal, because it is not actual rhyme; but it is still within the bounds of good taste, if I may pretend for a moment to be an arbiter of such. It is particularly useful with words that have no or few true rhymes; you may note that in my last sonnet I used "preserved" and "undisturbed" as slant rhyme, as there are quite few words that are true rhymes with either (they do exist - swerved and curbed, for instance - but they are rare). Slant rhyme should be used only when the word fits so neatly into the sense of the sonnet that the slight hiccup in the rhyme scheme is almost unnoticed (and of course, as with the metrical variations, a slant rhyme may be used for effect too). Too much slant rhyme loses the rhyme scheme and starts looking like unrhymed verse, but in moderation it can significantly free up the poet's ability to make meaning.
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