And of course he has to do a lot dancing around the fact that Gwendolyn Brooks, Derick Walcot and other writers of color and minority writers made great use of form in a lot of their poetry.

But who is expecting logic from revisionists?

Speaking of rhyme, there was a lot of rhyming poetry in the January issue of Poetry. I particularly liked the opening pieces by Stephen Edgar--an Australian poet, the biography note says. Do the many Australians out there know him and like him? The poems are dense and complex and they intrigue me. Good use of rhyme, I thought.

dwl

Some at least of his poems seem to be up on the web site

http://www.poetrymagazine.org/magazine/0108/index.html

The Red Sea in particular is pretty typical with the nonce form and smooth ride through the stanzas. There was also a brief thread about him in The Discerning Eye

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtm...ML/000231.html

I whole heartedly recommend his most recent book Other Summers (which has an odd review up at the Poetry site). I've only chatted to him once or twice since he moved to Sydney. He gave a reading which I attended and was at one other event. I could be wrong but I believe he was something of a protege of Gwen Harwood, another Australian (Tasmanian) mostly formal poet. His name keeps cropping up over here in prizes and poetry magazines. So it seems that its not impossible to thrive writing formal poetry (very formal actually)in Australia but he'd be close to the only one. Geoff Page writes formal poetry as well, some of which I like alot, but he mixes it up with other stuff.



[This message has been edited by Peter Coghill (edited January 20, 2008).]

Brian, welcome, and thanks for the Victrola poem.

David, I hope an Ozzie does have something to reply about those poems in Poetry. (Frustratingly, I can't find my January issue--I'm not sure I got one.)

A while back, I was wondering where to find a bibliography of articles in the ongoing formalism/anti-formalism debate. I found one, in the back matter of Rebel Angels, which probably everyone but me on this list has read years ago.

Seeing the bibliography and the acknowledgments lists in that book makes me very conscious of the size of the debt formalists owed to Story Line Press, and what a loss it is that they've gone under.

Not to distract from other questions above, but I have another one: When and how does clever rhyme become distracting? When is there too much of a good thing?

(Editing back because I see I cross-posted with Peter above, and I'm glad to have his recommendations and links.)

Brian Watson,
Thank you a million times for His Master's Voice. Years of record collecting and a bit of a struggle in the music business have made me love and empathise with that dog. I have never read a poem to him and wonder why I didn't try to write one. Who wrote it? Wiping away a tear.
Janet

WHOOPS! It's The Victor Dog, by Merrill.

I'm from the tape cassette generation, old enough to have nostalgia for my parent's classical gramophone records. This the first Merrill poem I read, and it was love at first sight.

Thank you Maryann and Janet (and David, in another thread) for your welcomes.

Brian,
I have it on good authority that the original dog was called "Nipper".
Janet

Fortunately, I was last in school in 1967, and thus escaped knowing what phrases like "decontextualizing poetry" are supposed to mean. This keeps my mind free for trying to write the stuff...

How about my rhyme scheme from my poem, "Hindu Woman: A Dream." The poem's not up to par with the standards here, but I like my rhyme scheme. It was my first sonnet BTW. I've been working on it for 3 years now.

silhouette
lure
debt
cynosure

prepared
ragas
shared
talas

breasts
bell
undress
knell

thighs
lies

or the alternate couplet of

svengali
Kali

Christy--I like what I'm seeing. I especially like the rhymes in your first stanza, and the alternate ending couplet intrigues me--makes me want to see the poem!

By the way, nice first post!

I just finished a poem called "Birthwalla." Walla is a Hindi/English term meaning merchant or seller, so you have in Indian speech a "cigarettewalla" or "fruitwalla." It was fun using Indian terms in that poem.

DWL

By the way, the poem by Quincy that just got published (see Accomplished Members) has some great rhymes in it. They're all the way through, but two of my favorites: "virus/Osirus," "fences/blintzes." Check it out, there are lots more.

Other great rhymes (e.g., knew so/Caruso) are here, in Catherine Tufariello's "Death of a Doorman," which is a great poem: http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/tufariellodeath.html

Bob,
Thank you for the link to the poem-it is quite wonderful.

Martin

I'd like to read your poem, David. Mine really has only 2 problems: a badly placed caesura and all the lines are pretty much end-stops. I've worked on it for almost 3 years. It still isn't perfect, but it was my first sonnet.

Christy--here's the poem. "Walla" means, actually, "one associated with," though it is often used of merchants (though not exclusively). The rhymes in this villanelle are some conventional, some slant.

dwl

Birthwalla

The cigarwalla sold his smoky wares
and Padma felt the first contraction’s pain.
The fruitwalla arranged his mounds of pears

as Aamir helped her down the narrow stairs
and to the taxi waiting in the rain.
The cigarwalla sold his smoky wares

and smiled. He would be much less in arrears
if Padma had a boy to be their scion.
The fruitwalla arranged his mounds of pears

and smiled as well. He breathed out thankful prayers:
they’d celebrate, he’d get a lot of gain.
The cigarwalla sold his smoky wares

and thought, Cigars for everyone! Charge d’affaires
of male camaraderie I’ll be ordained!
The fruitwalla arranged his mounds of pears

and calculated profits when the cheers
of celebrating kin rose in refrain.
The cigarwalla sold his smoky wares.
The fruitwalla arranged his mounds of pears.

Yes, DWL, wallas! I especially like the job title Dhobi Walla (laundry man).

Since you-all are mentioning or posting your own... I started thinking about the more outrageous rhymes I’ve perpetrated. In one little confection I rhymed “sandwiches” with “brand which is”. Now tell me a dozen did it before me! I doubt, though, that many have rhymed “Zimbabwe” with “drab way”. That occurs in my most relentless and sustained rhyming effort, Djibouti Jazzband . I enjoyed myself there because I thought, outrageous or not, all the rhymes fitted the flow.



[This message has been edited by Henry Quince (edited February 14, 2008).]

Limericks of course invite clever rhyming.

[This message has been edited by Jan D. Hodge (edited February 22, 2008).]

On the subject of rhyme, I managed to study "Pippa Passes" in college without even noticing (or the professor indicating) the immortal rhyme of "owls and bats, cowls and twats."

Browning, God bless his innocence, thought a twat was part of a nun's habit.

Gail, a few years ago we had a thread on this and I did a take on it. The pun is clearly deliberate in one of Will's plays ("Taming of the Shrew"?).


Then, owls and bats,
Cowls and twats,
Monks and nuns, in a cloister’s moods,
Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry.

Browning, "Pippa Passes"


The Poet Who Mistook His Hat for a Twat

Some balding nuns, their duties shirkin’,
learned about the perfect merkin
when reading rhymes with wording quaint
(but no allusions to a saint!)
that made them restless on their cots:
the poet traded hats for twats.

Cheers,


------------------
Ralph

Slumming, I was listening to the song "What It's Like" by the rap star Everlast.BANNED POST He had some good ones:

We've all seen the man in the liquor store begging for your change
His beard is dirty his dredlocks are full of mange
He asks a man for what he can spare with shame in his eyes
"Get a job, you fucking slob," is all he replies.
But God forbid you'd ever walk a mile in his shoes--
'cause then you really might know what it's like to sing the blues.

Or,

This kid named Max used to make fat stacks on the corner with drugs.
He liked to stay up late, he liked to get shit-faced and keep apace with thugs . . .

and so on.

This is a long, long thread, and I have not carefully read every posting in it, so I hope I am not repeating what someone else has said. But...

My absolutely favorite rhyming romp in all climes and times are in Mad Dogs and Englishmen. Not because of the complexity, but because of the seeming simplicity and absolute rightness of every single one.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen
(Noel Coward)

In tropical climes there are certain times of day
When all the citizens retire,
to tear their clothes off and perspire.
It's one of those rules that the biggest fools obey,
Because the sun is much too sultry and one must avoid
its ultry-violet ray --
Papalaka-papalaka-papalaka-boo. (Repeat)
Digariga-digariga-digariga-doo. (Repeat)
The natives grieve when the white men leave their huts,
Because they're obviously, absolutely nuts --

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
The Japanese don't care to, the Chinese wouldn't dare to,
Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one,
But Englishmen detest a siesta,
In the Philippines there are lovely screens,
to protect you from the glare,
In the Malay states there are hats like plates,
which the Britishers won't wear,
At twelve noon the natives swoon, and
no further work is done -
But Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

It's such a surprise for the Eastern eyes to see,
That though the British are effete,
they're quite impervious to heat,
When the white man rides, every native hides in glee,
Because the simple creatures hope he will
impale his solar topee on a tree.
Bolyboly-bolyboly-bolyboly-baa. (Repeat)
Habaninny-habaninny-habaninny-haa. (Repeat)
It seems such a shame that when the English claim the earth
That they give rise to such hilarity and mirth -

Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
The toughest Burmese bandit can never understand it.
In Rangoon the heat of noon is just what the natives shun.
They put their scotch or rye down, and lie down.
In the jungle town where the sun beats down,
to the rage of man or beast,
The English garb of the English sahib merely gets a bit more creased.
In Bangkok, at twelve o'clock, they foam at the mouth and run,
But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen, go out in the midday sun.
The smallest Malay rabbit deplores this stupid habit.
In Hong Kong, they strike a gong, and fire off a noonday gun.
To reprimand each inmate, who's in late.
In the mangrove swamps where the python romps
there is peace from twelve till two.
Even caribous lie down and snooze, for there's nothing else to do.
In Bengal, to move at all, is seldom if ever done,
But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.




[This message has been edited by Janice D. Soderling (edited February 18, 2008).]

Janice-

I'd heard of "Mad Dogs and Englishman" because Ralph sings it on the Muppet Show. You can see how deeply cultured I am.

Also, I wanted to share a poem by one of the worst poets of all time. Any rhyme she used is one to exercise extreme caution around.

Epitaph Suitable for a Critics's Tomb

My! What a bubbly, vapoury box of vanity!
A litter of worms, a relic of humanity,
Once a plaster-caste of mud, a puff of breath as well,
Before you chance to wander - remember there's a -----
So here lies an honest critic and I tell thee what,
'Tis a thing for all the world to stare and wonder at!

- From Fumes of Formation by Amanda McKittrick Ros

I kinda like my rhymes of a sonnet I wrote about a month ago. The sestet is nothing though.

shampoo
Vietnam
Psalm
zoo
food
SSI
thigh
screwed

pray
replied
free
play
outside
TV

The rhyme I'm proudest of was in the closing couplet of a translation I did of a quatrain in a version of The Prison Poems of Ho Chi Minh I published a few years ago.

HIGH CUISINE AT BAOXIANG PRISON

At Guode they relish a fish on a dish.
Here the guards are agog for saddle of dog.
This taste for the high life’s a little outré,
And I wonder just what would Escoffier say?

I should pount out that the source poem, which was composed in Chinese in the classical style, didn't contain the French word "outre" or any reference to Escoffier, but given that Ho worked under Escoffier at the Carlton Hotel in London for awhile and spoke French fluently, I didn;t feel guilty about taking these particular liberties with the text.

In Cleveland in the early ‘60’s John Ciardi was giving a talk at John Carroll University. He was doing his famous discussion of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” in which he pointed out that the form of the poem was an interlocking rubaiyat which should have ended by circling back, in the last quatrain, to the first stanza to pick up the main rhyme again. Instead, Ciardi said, Frost broke the form, and in breaking it made the poem a hundredfold more effective than it would otherwise have been had he maintained the requirements of the rubaiyat.

The house was packed. One of those present was a woman named “Yetta Blank” (that was really her name). John recited the first two lines of the last stanza of Frost’s poem, then the third line, “And miles to go before I sleep.” He paused dramatically, looked at the audience and said rhetorically, “Now, how would you have ended that poem?”

Yetta Blank leapt to her feet and called out, “And now I lay me down to sleep?” In the hall, dead silence. Ciardi leaned across the podium, rested on his forearms, lanced her with his gaze and said, “You really think so, huh?”

Just came back to this thread after a particularly long absence and was a bit distressed to see the Sadoff article attacked as being yet another instance of PC academic assaults on culture. The article really is far more subtle than that. Sadoff essentially argues that many of the reasons that New Formalist critics gave as arguments for returning to traditional metre and rhyme were misplaced, in that they posed prosodic solutions to thematic problems. I don't entirely subscribe to his argument, but I do to a large extent--particularly in that he does not consider New Formalism to be unique in that regard.

There is no doubt a serious discussion to be had on Sadoff's piece, but straw-manning his position is not the way to go about it.

Quincy

True, Quincy, there are a few important elements in this essay.

I do agree with his comments on the LANG-PO folk:


“Language poets demand that we interrupt the poetic process so, like good post-modernists, we can acknowledge the artifice of the work of art. We forget that Coleridge's distinction between word and thing accomplished their work almost two hundred years ago. We forget that Barth and Barthelme exhausted this device in American fiction some fifteen years ago. What is more narcissistic and repetitive than making the work of art, discourse itself, the subject of the art?”

In short – wankers one and all.

And his concluding paragraph is worth repeating, and worth taking note of.


“If we forget the primacy of the Romantics' understanding of vision (as Blake says, "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite"), American poets risk contributing to the myopia, the diminishment of the art form. The mistake of the neo- formalists, then, is the mistake of all those who believe that form has a life of its own. We read Keats's poems not because they make lovely sounds, although they do, but because those sounds are connected to perception, and those perceptions dramatize intensely the relationship between the admittedly uncomfortable contingent self and a shifting world. A poetry of fixed forms can only console; it cannot transform. The neo-formalists miss the irony of the urn's statement, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -- that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." If we want our poems to live, in every sense of the word, we need to know and see much more and we need to know it soon.”

I agree.

That's very interesting, Mr. Turco. I think it's good to appreciate form without letting it control us. Sometimes we just need to be bold enough to write outside the box (like coloring outside the lines). I once did that with a double sonnet. Too often, though, my coloring outside the lines is an accidental oversight that doesn't work out, especially with the little french forms.

A belated welcome to you -
Anne

It would be cool if someone could make a poem and rhyme caesura, obscura, and appogiatura. I think there was one other word that rhymes with those, but I forgot it.

For me, appogiatura
implies there was bravura
first - I'll slip in a caesura,
and sip some angostura
as it all becomes obscura

Except for the spelling of appoggiatura, this is typical of your bravura, Michael.

I always insert an error somewhere, Janis, since only God is perfect.

[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited April 08, 2008).]

I'm luvin' it!

Michael, appoggiatura —
two Gs— just means that you're a
leaner on obscurer
notes. Not saying you were.

(In Brit that almost rhymes.)

Totally my fault, Michael. I learned the proper spelling. I just don't know if it was before or after the post; a spelling error or a typo.

[This message has been edited by Christy Reno (edited April 17, 2008).]

David Landrum is free to admire (perhaps a little extravagantly) the "cunts / once" rhyme in the Kennedy
epigram, but it's not original with Kennedy. It appears
in a much better epigram by Robert Frost (possibly the greatest of all rhymers):

God fell in love but once,
Though with the best excuse.
He wasn't fond of cunts--
Not half so much as Zeus.


(Quoting from memory, so maybe slightly inaccurately)

Just skimming through this. In the recent Poetry, Carmine Starnino in his review of Kirsch's Modern Element says, "...I can't help but feel that the best explanation for his choices in Invasions is provided by Paul Valery, who said that the chief pleasure of rhyme is the rage it inspires in its opponents." Well, I love that... but I've been unable to locate the actual Valery quotation. Does anyone know it?

I can't find the Valery quotation either, but I did find a little bit more of it. In fact, I found this on a blog by someone also looking for the full quotation:

Although when I googled for it all that came up was this slightly different version: "Paul Valery said that one of the most mysterious things about rhyme 'is the rage it inspires in those who fail to see its function.'"

Failing to see the function of rhyme must be something like failing to see the function of blueness in the sky, I suppose.



[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited May 06, 2008).]

Here it is…

“Not the least of the pleasures of rhyme is the rage it inspires in those poor people who think they know something more important than a convention. They hold the naïve belief that a thought can be more profound, more organic…than any mere convention.” (Italics in source)

from “A Poet’s Notebook” in Valéry, The Art of Poetry, tr. Folliot, D. New York: Pantheon Books, 1958: page 179 (“Calepin d’un poète” in Poèsie, essai sur la poétique et le poète, 1928)

Valéry has many, many wonderful and pregnant things to say about the writing of verse.

Clive

Thank you!