Every day I boot up Dictionary.com at least half a dozen times to check definitions and synonyms. I haven’t used the Reference, Translation or Web segments of the site. But so far I’ve found it ever so much easier and faster to click my mouse in the middle of writing, sometimes using two browsers at once, rather than reach for my “American Heritage Dictionary” or “Roget’s Thesaurus.”

Today I discovered Dictionary.com Word Explorer, a series uploaded onto PRX starting this past February. Although individual segments have rated five stars, no single interstitial has earned a comment. I’m happy as only a poet can be to rave about the latest piece, which happens to be about rhyme.

Is it a crime
To rave about rhyme?
No, not for me.
Not all verse is free.

Venus Kitagawa’s breezy two-minute talk will catch the attention of librarians, lab techies and lounge lizards alike. She traces rhyming poetry to the tenth-century Chinese Shi Jing, which you can look up on the Web segment of Dictionary.com. She replays the frog-in-his-throat voice of Thomas Edison reciting “Mary Had a Little Lamb” as the first recording ever made. She gives a brisk rendition of the first four lines of Poe’s “The Raven.”

Glossing over Shakespeare, Dr. Seuss and hip-hop artists in one sentence, she has no time for Parnassian distinctions like “masculine” and “feminine” rhymes, let alone Emily Dickinson’s use of slant rhymes. Perhaps she allots a bit too much time to the spelling of “rhyme” versus “rime,” along with its etymology. But these are small quibbles.

Any series devoted to words like “genius,” “cul-de-sac,” “juxtapose” and “beer” can’t be all bad. Just click your mouse on one of these words in the series and hear for yourself.