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Because Gorman wrote “The Hill We Climb” in free verse, the poem doesn’t have a consistent rhyme scheme. However, rhyme does play an important role throughout the poem, often serving to elevate the language or else punctuate moments of special rhetorical significance. Gorman begins incorporating rhyme from the opening stanza, which contains a conventional rhyming couplet (lines 3–4):

In this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry, a sea we must wade.

The second stanza extends this same basic couplet pattern, though the rhymes are slightly less exact (lines 5–8):

We braved the belly of the beast.
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,
And the norms and notions of what “just” is
            Isn’t always justice.

Although beast and peace are very close in sound, the final T in “beast” marks a subtle difference. Likewise, the clever pairing of “just” is and justice is virtually identical, the only difference being that the S sound in “is” is voiced, whereas in justice the final S sound is sibilant. In addition to the increasingly unusual rhyme pairs, it’s also worth noting that the “couplets” in this second passage grow increasingly unconventional in that they feature variable line lengths. Whereas the first couplet consisted of two lines with four stressed beats, all the lines in these couplets have a different number of beats. Already, Gorman is signaling a move away from traditional rhyme structures.

As the poem continues, the rhymes grow less frequent. However, when they do appear, they often create sophisticated rhetorical effects. As an example, consider lines 27–30:

We close the divide,
Because we know to put
Our future first, we must first
Put our differences aside.

Here, Gorman uses rhyme as a device to frame a single sentence. The specific words chosen for this rhyme create a particularly subtle effect. Though the sentence made up by these four lines describes the need to come together and “put / Our future first,” the rhyme words emphasize not unity but separation: divide, aside. Furthering the sense of paradox, these rhyme words are separated from each other, sitting at opposite ends of the sentence. Yet it’s precisely this paradox that the speaker aims to express: the divide between people can only be closed if the people distance themselves from their differences. Many similarly effective examples of rhyme appear throughout the poem. Several of these examples make clever use of internal rhyme, often in concert with end rhyme. Take, for example, lines 45–46:

Won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.
That is the promised glade

An even nimbler play of rhymes appears in lines 60–61:

We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
Of such a terrifying hour.

The sheer ingenuity of the closely spaced rhymes recalls the linguistic innovations of slam poetry and hip-hop. These and other examples of rhyme throughout the poem enrich Gorman’s language with rhetorical sophistication.

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