Yes, Tim is much too tough to be called
Timmy. How about Timbo?

Tim's forefathers would have called him Timin pronounced Timeen but only when he was young.

Jimeen- quite a while back.

[This message has been edited by Jim Hayes (edited August 29, 2001).]

Oh, no! "Timbo" is entirely too unloving. We need to import several things from Spanish, clearly: chief among them the diminutive, without which the Spanish-speaking person who wants to love anybody, of any age and either sex, is rendered speechless.

Another is the upside-down question mark at the beginning of interrogatory sentences. Without those, you may begin a sentence without recognizing it as a question, if its syntax is not clearly interrogative, and find yourself at the end not knowing what to do with your voice, and having to adopt the quetioning "lift" at the last minute. It makes much more sense to let the reader know, right at the beginning, that he's about to ask something. I use inverted punctuation in English--so as to encourage its use--even at the risk of seeming weird, in the belief that weird is sometimes right.

And third--see how inexorably I'm leading back to form!--the "ovillejo," an old Spanish verse form that means "tight little bundle." "-ejo" is one of our blessed diminutives, and "ovillo" means "tangled ball of yarn." I've seen only a few of them, but it was love at first sight, because of the
fun involved. Here's a home-made sample that will show why it's called what it's called, and illustrate the way the lines are related to each other. The last line is a "redondilla," a "little round" that collects all three of the short lines. The rhyme scheme is established, but the meter is at the poet's discretion, although in Spanish the longer lines tend to be octosyllabic. Here goes:

OSTINATO

Evidence says I lie
But I--
Though all the world concur--
Prefer
One voice, and one alone:
My own.
The experts cluck and groan,
"No, no! It's round, not flat!"
Their data second that.
But I prefer my own.

Ovillejos don't have to be light verse, of course. Now, all of you gifted gringos, try one: I dare you. I double-dare you.

Well, I for one am going to try to write an ovillejo. (For those who don't know, "ll" is pronounced like "y", and the "j" like an "h" (right, Rhina?) -- O vee YAY ho, although the long A sound of the "e" (the "YAY" part) is spoken with a shorter sound than in English.)

It seems to me that the best way to write an ovillejo is to start with the final line and then break it up in parts for the lines leading up to it.

I would love to have diminutives in English also -- I recently had a three-year relationship with a Dominican man, and it never occurred to me to call him "Hectorito"; now, of course, it's too late. I'm not so sure about the inverted question mark, though -- there is something nice about not knowing how a sentence will end.

Thanks, Caleb, for explaining the pronunciation: that will be very helpful to Jimeen and Timeen. Yes, by all means let's see those ovillejos, from the four corners of the world!

Ovillejo, what a beautiful name, Thank you Rhina.

Well let's see how I got on with your challenge-

The Dream of the Mean Bachelor

Each time I sleep I seem
to dream
of you and dreaming so,
I know
compatibility
is free,
it is no cost to me
to go and buy you flowers—
nor hold your hand for hours.
To dream, I know, is free.

Jim

[This message has been edited by Jim Hayes (edited August 30, 2001).]

Rhina, in response to your first challenge of posting poems in established forms, here is a villanelle of mine, which I once posted in Metrical. I've reworked it a thousand times, I'm afraid. Here's what's left of it.

The Almond Tree

They danced under the almond tree
enduring the revolution.
Sometimes I hear their memories.

The war was snubbed by folded leaves.
While flitting, their unmindful feet,
they danced under the almond tree.

When suitors sneaked love serenades
the girls would dance seductively
(sometimes). I hear their memories.

One girl found love and from her lips
he tasted almond sweetness as
they danced. Under the almond tree

they wed. She left and gradually
her family followed her north.
Sometimes I hear, there, memories.

I never got to see their tree.
Through almond shaped stories I know
they danced under the almond tree.
Sometimes I hear their memories.


Next, I will take on your ovillejo challenge.

-Nadia


[This message has been edited by NADIA (edited August 30, 2001).]

I can never resist a dare, especially a double-dare.

In this Garden

He asks that I proclaim,
or name
the blessings love is for,
what's more
he'd like to see a chart:
The heart
hardpressed by flesh or art --
when even Eve could not conceive
of what's to come, what's to grieve,
or name, what's more, the heart.

````````

wendy v
(gringito poet)

How delightful to find new poems this way! Let's hear it for NYC and Kilkenny! Jim, this ovillejo is so good, so feathery-light and yet damning of the "mean bachelor"--who is doomed to solitude, I'd say!--that I have only one small suggestion: should "nor" in line 9 be "and"? I can follow the logic of a negative conjunction there, but if you want one of those, should it be "or"? I think, in fact, that one might be best. I love the way he seems to be thinking out loud while the reader overhears!

Nadia, your villanelle is very moving, especially for some-one who's heard such stories from elders, as I have, in the tropical setting you suggest. The "serenades," the "almond sweetness," the travels "north," are all heavily freighted with meaning. And that telling summing-up--"I never got to see their tree"--tells so economically the separation of one generation and another, hints at all of what our young people "never get to see." I like this poem so much that I wish you would work it into as good a poem as it could be, by using, rather than bypassing, the sound-repetitions that are its strength and the source of its music.

You do a beautiful job of altering the two repeated lines: every one of your alterations is meaningful and suggests subtle nuances, and you make those alterations by using both homonyms and punctuation.

What needs work is the middle lines: they really should rhyme, to keep up the "song" that is a villanelle. Also, lines 1 and 3 should be perfect rhymes, or at least closer to it: I wonder about the use of singular and plural as rhymes in any poem, but especially in a form so dependent on sound. "Leaves" and "trees" may work, but not "leaves" and "tree," and not "serenades" and "memories."

You might begin by making the tree plural, and then finding better rhymes for some of those lines. What I would emphatically NOT do is abandon this poem: it's too good, it has too much it needs to say.

This is a delightful thread - and very helpful to another novice metricist. I can't resist a challenge. In fact, Clive is always posting poems in new forms that I just have to try. I find that when I just allow it, the form will carry me where a poem wants to go, and then I begin the arduous task of editing. The poets here have been so valuable to me in understanding what differentiates a good draft from an excellent poem. Here is one that emerged after Clive posted a viralais:

Vera Lays

How warm the sheets where Vera lays
by night or day, the salty mates
who dock in port
on leave from draft at sea extended.
How skillfully their pipes she plays.
Their idle prates
she listens to with lively sport
while prone to prow or ass up-ended.
But Vera says
that soon she'll have to close the gates;
she's heard the imminent report
of her intended

It was great fun just taking a bit of word play and letting it roll around to its own conclusion.

With a double-dare, I'll have to work twice as hard or perhaps I'll just have twice as much fun.