Hey everyone! I’ve been working on the next chapter of the guide behind the scenes for a bit, and I am incredibly excited to finally share it with you all.

If you’ve been following along here for a while, you know how passionate I am about contemporary poetry and helping us all hone our writing craft. But I noticed that a lot of the traditional advice out there on rhyming is either way too rigid or gets stuck in old playground rules—which usually leaves you writing lines you don’t even mean just to make a couple of words match.

I wanted to change that, so I put together a deep-dive resource to help break out of that trap.

I just launched the new The Poet’s Guidebook – Part 2 page, and it’s entirely focused on mastering Rhyme and Resonance.

What You’ll Find Inside

I didn’t want this to be just another dry, academic lecture on poetics. Instead, I structured this guide to give you tangible, actionable tools to elevate the music of your language. Here is a quick look at what I packed into it:

• Slant Rhyme vs. Perfect Rhyme: A breakdown of why traditional “perfect” rhymes can sometimes make modern poetry feel a bit dated or predictable, and how leaning into near/slant rhymes creates a much more human, emotionally complex echo.
• The Art of Internal Rhyme: Three concrete ways to hide your rhymes inside your lines—using the Mid-Line Mirror, the Interlocking Stitch, or the Enjambed Echo—so you can knit your poems together organically without making them read like greeting cards.
• The “Forced Rhyme” Survival Checklist: A practical, 3-step test to ensure you never sacrifice your authentic voice just to chase a rhyme, along with a few of my favorite modern digital tools to expand your vocabulary when your brain hits a wall.

Take a Look and Let Me Know What You Think

I poured a lot of thought into making sure these techniques are easy to practice and instantly applicable to whatever you’re working on in your notebook right now.

Head over to The Poet’s Guidebook – Part 2, check it out, and let me know your thoughts. Which technique are you going to try out in your next draft? Let’s chat in the comments below!