A Nation of Rhymers
Rhymes allow us to say the same thing over and over again lengthily, verbosely,
gracefully, powerfully, rhythmically, and rhymingly, making it easy to remember and
recite or sing. Through their newly-acquired musicality and sheer recitation, these words
circulate and mobilize, sometimes conjuring hundreds of thousands of people to the
streets and moving them to fight, to kill, and to die.
Rhyming is an everyday linguistic practice as well as the centerpiece of an
ideology of culture, as attested to by two chief representatives from opposite political
camps of modern Thai poetry: No.Mo.So., alias Prince Phitthayalongkorn (1877-1945),
a staunch royalist, and Intharayut, alias Atsani Phonlajan (1918-1987), a diehard
communist. No.Mo.So writes: