[Rose Kelleher]

The author of this site claims to have been in contact with Lewis Turco, so I'm optimistically assuming his information is accurate.
http://www.thepoetsgarret.com/celtic1.html

Shall we give some of these a try?

Here's my attempt at "Ae freslighe".

Poets from Connecticut
are very prim and prudish,
connoisseurs of etiquette
who find Neruda brutish.

Poets from Namibia
write verse that's terse and tony,
humerus to tibia,
all bone and no baloney.

Poets from Eratosphere
use rhyme although they know it's
sneered at in the stratosphere
by all the famous poets.

Blech, sorry. This is not easy (except maybe if you're Janet). These may not be the greatest forms to use for serious English-language poetry, but they make for challenging exercises. The author of the site notes that old Irish "lent itself to natural rhythm and rhyme and possibly alliteration and consonance." From the few examples I've seen, it looks like many words were trochaic.

[Jim Hayes]

Nevermind.
As the saying has it.



[This message has been edited by Jim Hayes (edited October 22, 2008).]

[John Whitworth]

Rose, this is fun. Jim is, of course, quite right. The same problems arise, it seems to me, with haiku However, as a vehicle for Light verse the form seems worth pursuing, In fact this thread unlocked a problem I had in writing a poem for a competition called 'Letter'. The third stanza of the following came more or less at once in response to your challenge. And the rest followed with more effort. I am aware that there is an imperfect rhyme here in the second stanza. I tried to mend it, but I couldn't. If anyone can suggest a way to do it I would be grateful.

Letter

My Son, in all the tracts of life
So varied and circuitous,
Acquaintance with the facts of life
Will not be found gratuitous.

Some practices iniquitous
(Your mother feels it keenly)
Though more or less ubiquitous
Are nonetheless unseemly:

Sex in railway carriages
Is not to be commended,
For thus too many marriages
Are prematurely ended.

Likewise, in taxis, air balloons
And low, notorious houses,
Keep it inside your pantaloons
And button up your trousers!

True love and domesticity
Are infinitely better,
Affording true felicity.
It’s best you burn this letter.

[Jim Hayes]

It's a good effort John, but to be true to the form you have to finish on the initial word or line. Not to difficult to accomplish viz;

Son in all the tracts of life
...better burn this letter son.

More difficult is to adhere to the seven syllable line requirement and the alternating trisyllabic/bisyllabic rhyme pairings.

However, as a variant it's fine as is.

[This message has been edited by Jim Hayes (edited October 22, 2008).]

[Rose Kelleher]

Let me rephrase that. What I meant to say was, sometimes an exercise is just an exericse.


[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited October 22, 2008).]

[Jim Hayes]

Let me also rephrase that.

Exercise as much as you wish, I did no more that explain why mastery in the form would be difficult to achieve.
My response was considered and respectful to the tradition and to you, it deserved better that an arrogant, dismissive put-down.


[This message has been edited by Jim Hayes (edited October 22, 2008).]

[John Beaton]

John, a suggestion for S2:

Habits are iniquitous
(your Mother feels it keenly)—
seemingly ubiquitous,
they’re seldom practiced cleanly.

I suspect that, in English, these are slightly easier to think of as internally rhymed trochaic fourteeners, i.e.

Habits are iniquitous (your Mother feels it keenly)—
seemingly ubiquitous, they’re seldom practiced cleanly.

John

[John Whitworth]

Thank you for your thoughtful suggestion, John. I am cogitating. According to my Penguin rhyming dictionary, theer are only two rhymes for keenly and only two also for unseemly.Cleany, as in Cleanliness is next to Godliness is, unfortunately pronounced another way, dammit.

You are right again, Jim. My poem is not in the Irish form but just a bit like it.

[This message has been edited by John Whitworth (edited October 22, 2008).]

[Patricia A. Marsh]

Originally posted by John Whitworth:
....
According to my Penguin rhyming dictionary, theer are only two rhymes for keenly ....

According to www.rhymezone.com:

keenly
cleanly
greenly
routinely
obscenely
serenely

[John Beaton]

John, rhyming dictionaries blinker you to large tracts of the language landscape.

"Cleanly" is pronounced with the same "e" sound as "clean". The OED will confirm this.

Rhyming dictionaries, even rhymezone, are hopelessly incomplete. For most words you can easily come up with rhymes that a rhyming dictionary will not include.

They are fine for getting a quick list of rhymes, but no good at all for indicating when the possibilities have been exhausted.

For instance, Patricia's rhymezone list lacks:

meanly
leanly
uncleanly
ordenely
terrenely
queenly,
unforeseenly
sheenly
beinly
pleinly
pristinely

All of the above appear in the OED with rhyming pronunciation.

In addition, they miss all potential coinages, e.g.

Grandmas are iniquitous --
they gad about has-beenly,
make themselves ubiquitous,
and smile seventeenly.

John