Speccie Rhyming Dictionary by 14th November
 

Well blow me down. If we don't come up with a bundle of winners here my name's not Lord Byron. Which it isn't. Did you know Byron used Walker's Rhyming Dictionary and endorsed it?


No. 2773: Rhyme time

You are invited to submit a poem entitled ‘On First Looking into a Rhyming Dictionary’ (16 lines maximum). Please email entries, wherever possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 14 November.

So many times, I struggled with the verse,
But somehow I could never find the rhymes;
I must admit there is no use pretending -
My lines all lacked a proper rhyming finish.

The words at their conclusion never matched
However hard my wretched head I rubbed,
And quatrain after quatrain fell apart
Because I hadn’t mastered rhyming skill.

But when I found this book, I was transfigured,
And those who read my verse no longer sniggered.
My mastery of rhyme became astounding,
And critics’ praise unstinted and resounding.

I felt like stout Cortez - I mean, Balboa -
Discovering Mexico - or was it Goa?
A realm of gold, this book, no doubt about it -
I don’t know how I ever did without it.

Nice one Brian. It has the sheen of winning about it. Effortless.

A quick, clever response, Brian. No less than we'd expect of you, of course! :)

But... as it purposely doesn't rhyme - at least until you wanted it to - why not avoid the inversion of "However hard my wretched head I rubbed", in favour of "However hard I rubbed my wretched head"?
(Though your poem is about the lack of finding suitable rhymes before using the dictionary, that's not the same as lacking general poetic skill.)

Jayne

Jayne, the point about the first two stanzas is that they could and should rhyme - it's just that the wrong, non-rhyming word has been used.

Here's how they should be:

I struggled with the verse so many times, (word order changed)
But somehow I could never find the rhymes;
I must admit there is no use pretending -
My lines all lacked a proper rhyming ending. (finish)

The words at their conclusion never matched
However hard my wretched head I scratched, (rubbed)
And quatrain after quatrain fell apart
Because I hadn’t mastered rhyming art. (skill)

So the inversion is an unfortunate necessity, otherwise the missing rhyme "scratched" would be in the wrong place. But I've got plenty of time to see if I can find a way to improve it ...

Ah, I see what you mean, Brian.

Sorry, I missed the placing of 'scratched' at the end of the line. I thought the off-rhymes were just random, not having paid proper attention. Duh!

Your poem is similar to one I posted on Metrical last year, called Writer's Block:

They said to me, “Write something. Not in rhyme.”
Screw that, I thought, I haven’t got the ti inclination
to write in ‘free’; I always write rhymed verse.
This was anathema; there’s nothing wor more dreadful
than being forced to go against the grain.
It’s put me under quite a lot of strai pressure.
I told them I would have a go. (Some hope!)
I can’t think of a thing; I feel a do right fool.
It ought to be a simple thing to write
‘sans rhyme’. I stayed up half the bloody nigh way through the late film;
came up with no ideas at all. I guess
I’ve made a hash of it, a total mes muck-up.
I’ll stick to what I’m good at, from now on;
accept, at times like this, the Muse has g disappeared
but when it does return, I’ll try to plan
a poem in free verse which doesn’t sca have a decent metre.

Jayne

I'd often said I'm sure that I'm
the kind who can, without help, rhyme,
and said I thought it was a crime
of poets who were worse than slime,
whose verses were not worth a dime,
to use a crutch to help them chime.
But one day, sipping gin and lime
in a sleezy bar in Anaheim
(where I had gone for sunny clime)
I met a most convincing mime
who showed me poets in their prime
use rhyming dictionaries all the time.

Most entertaining, Jayne! I love the crossings-out that signal what the rhyme should have been.

Unfortunately, I can't use that technique, so I just hope Lucy spots what's going on - I can hardly send her an accompanying footnote.

And I really can't see any way to avoid that inversion ...

I don't think you need the crossings out, Jayne. People can see what you are doing. Very amusing. Dammit!

And here I am again, pretending I'm Louis MacNeice.

On First Looking Into a Rhyming Dictionary

How many verses hide here hesitating
Waiting impatient for their day to dawn;
Some wandering poet discombobulating
Their desolating fate to die unborn.

For here those poems are; they crouch in posse,
Their glossy locks attendant to the breeze.
At ease they lie like dogs until their flossy,
Bossy masters call them where they please.

The poets listen to the rhymes a-rustling
And bustling out of sight and out of mind,
Resigned to wring a meaning from the muscling,
And tussling with the magic words they find.

The poets know their rhymes are granted gratis,
To satisfy an ear that seeks for sound
Abounding in an interlacing lattice,
For that is where true poetry is found.

It's not my entry for the comp, John, but with a few tweaks I suppose it could be!

Jayne

Yes it could. Saves you the trouble of having to write something new. I always trawl through stuff I've done. Come to that...

Very neat indeed, John. Not content with rhymes merely at the end of each line ...

Yes indeedy. I got the idea from a poem by Louis MacNeice on that great poems file. I may say it's hellish tricky and my admiration for MacNeice knows no bounds. HIS poem sounds utterly natural.

I actually "built" these stanzas, line by line, within a very exhausting dream:

Within my room, I work to finish lines
that might support the stanzas of a sonnet,
and try to dovetail them as an octet.
But there are crucial problems with my rhymes
before I even smooth the fourth—such signs
of instability, beyond mere nit,
requires a Rhymer’s Guide to retrofit,
to square the verse with classical designs.

But then the lady whom I hope to woo—
not Will’s or Petrarch’s—spells my stanzas’ doom:
You’re pazzo if you think these dives’ll do!
I cannot fret, for she gives me the clue
that rhyming June and moon may cure her gloom
and canonize us in a sonnet room.

Ralph

Now, I've come at this one from a different angle and am working my way from:

Muscovies dabbled in the Chelmsford mould

to

Looked at his mother with a mild surprise
And leant upon a leek in Derringham

This may take me some time...

It took Joyce a lifetime.

A list of rhymes! It’s like a Cupid’s chart
That finds each word a happy counterpart,
Encouraging the pair to dance and dart
Around a poet’s noggin – Pretty smart!
Some say such lists plonk horse behind the cart;
These (serious as Dave or Dierdre Spart)
Declare: ‘True poems come straight from the heart,
And ought to come unbidden.’ (Like a fart?)
They look askance at rhyme, as at a tart,
And sniff: ‘That’s artifice, so can't be Art.'
Tell that to Browning, Pope or Lorenz Hart!
‘I rhyme therefore I am,’ René Descartes
Did not say – but I might, since for my part
I love to see words party. Right. Let’s start...

Much have I travell'd in the realms of blank
Verse and rhymeless odes and ballads made,
But when I've tried to rhyme I much have prayed
In vain, alas, before my poor heart sank,
Accusing me of being just a crank
Who ought to go and find an honest trade.
But then one day my doubts were all allayed,
And there's a dictionary I must thank,
A rhyming one, which when I come up dry
And cannot find a perfect match for night
Or I've forgotten bee and tree and glee
Are rhymes, although I try with all my might,
Is always there, my savior, standing by,
To give me what I need and rescue me.

Ah George, my sentiments exactly.

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO A RHYMING DICTIONARY

I used to be a rhymeless bard.
The reason was that rhymes are hard.
I hated when I had a thought
To find it all come down to naught
Because the words to make it clear
In rhyme would simply not appear.
But then one day an awesome tool
Allowed me to reverse that rule.
It gave me end-rhymes from the start,
Then I'd supply the middle part,
The thought that put the rhymes to use,
The tropes that served as my excuse
For rhyme, since in my poet's soul
That's pretty much my only goal.
If that means sometimes I must write
A thought I don't agree with quite,
So be it. It's the rhyme I share.
The reader will not know or care.

On First Looking Into a Rhyming Dictionary

Much had I floundered as a hapless schmuck
’Midst Mount Parnassus’ bitter windswept clime;
Until I had the providential luck
To crack Will Espy’s epic book on rhyme.

His “Words to Rhyme With” hit me like a bolt
Of lightning from the upper troposphere;
And changed me from a dilatory dolt,
To one forever cured of rhyming fear.

With Espy, I spin webs of clever verses
On nimrods who pursue the shy Melursus
And other beasts, of whom I seldom think;
Such as the creophagous Oxyrhynch.

I sing how engineers, in English tongue,
Expound on car suspensions, underslung;
And then I strike my harp and join the chorus
Of men who mourn the vanished Stegosaurus.

I suspect this Comp. has already been won by Brian. So I will stake my claim to failure with yet another Keats --

Much have I travailed in search of rhyme
for where stout Cortez and his conqu’rers gazed,
all silent in their wild surmise, amazed,
upon the distant ocean that first time.
Yet I, John Keats, a poet in my prime,
am stuck for rhyme. Although my pen is raised
my Muse has fled, my mind is glazed.
Weak rhyme must serve, and weak rhyme’s naught but crime.

Despite my purchase of a book they said
would satisfy my poet’s earnest yen
for choice of rhymes for where his band did tread
I find on searching through this tome my pen,
despite the honeyed blurb, has not been led
to stronger rhyme for Darien than “men” --

(There being scant scope I can see for “clarion”
and less for a Conquistador called Marion !)

Ah Willard Espy! I have his 'The Game of Words' up there on my shelf. How pleasant to meet another fan.

Espy
 

John,
Espy, aka the Bard of Oysterville, wrote several books, all of them great. If you do not have his "Words to Rhyme With", you should get one. Not only is the dictionary part very good, but there also is a basic primer on metered prosody. His witty little verses are interspersed through the dictionary, and are worth the price of admission alone.

I first saw his "Words to Rhyme With", at my town library. Soon afterwards, I picked up a slightly used copy on eBay. If you check eBay and the used book megasites, you should find a pre-owned copy at a bargain basement price.

You don't actually think that I came up with "Melursus" and "Oxyrhynch" on my own, do you?

I think I must have this book. Thanks for the tip.

On First Looking Into a Rhyming Dictionary

I took it down and I looked up 'orange.'
And just as I thought, there was nothing at all.
So what was the good of a 'rhyming dictionary'?
I don't need help rhyming 'call,' 'wall' or 'ball'

but when it comes to 'silver' or 'purple,'
words I can't think of rhymes for myself,
the book had no answers, and so, disappointed,
I closed it and put it back up on the shelf.

Two copies on eBay. Seventy quid apiece. Off to Abe...

Meanwhile, it did strike me that Keats could have gotten a whiff of the old serene if he'd read it in the... hold hard there.

That reminds of a letter I wrote to the Speccie once, long ago. It was after a modern composer's appearance on Desert Island Discs who chose as his one-and-only book "A Latin primer - so as to be able to read Homer in the original" and I couldn't resist questioning his choice. On two counts.

The above is an example of stream of semi-consciousness. It's been a long night.

Good Lord, Ann. Did you stay up for it? When I TOLD you Boris said it would be all right.

Roger, try this for a solution to one of your problems --

Need to find a rhyme for purple?
Pour yourself a generous drink
and maybe every mega-slurp'll
tune your mind and help you think.


Does the USA have the word "slurp"? Or are you all more modest, tidy and refined drinkers?

Strong drink may also be a help with orange and silver. Why not give it a go and report back?

Stay up? Well, of course I did. My daily newspaper published a card for playing "election bingo" and I couldn't go to bed until I'd ticked off all the clichés. Sort of cynical indoor twitching, lurking in the undergrowth hoping for a glimpse of Fiscal Cliff.

And, Pssst - Roger - Blorenge (mountain a few miles from my house. Wylfa (power station too few miles from my house) and hirple (what such as I do when hurrying for a bus), perhaps to the livestock market to bid on a chilver...

Added in: I found a copy of Douglas's recommended book in Texas for less than a quid. It is now on its way to me for less than six. Hurrah!

It's a shame that there’s no rhyme for orange,
But "‘purple" and "slurp’ll" is worse.
I’m just writing to say I abhor ing-
-enuity posing as verse.

Once upon a time there was a School Outfitters near Buckingham Palace called Frederick Gorringe -- an obvious gift for those small boys whose school uniforms were orange.... Which now only leaves Roger to find a rhyme for silver.

Brian -- Could "abhoring examples of real ingenuity"
suggest envy or spite -- or just mental vacuity ?

There´s also ´Blorenge´a hill or mountain near Abergavenny. No doubt Ann D. can confirm the pronunciation.

You’re right, I’m simply jealous of the skill ver-
-sifiers show in finding rhymes for silver.

As I said, there's this one. Welsh f's are pronounced as v's.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-n...wales-20234680

Though how long it remains rhymable is dependent on how good the Japanese are at building nuclear reactors...

Soddit - why can't Hitachi build them in their own country? (I know - I'm just testing you.)

Added in: This link (note the date!) makes me wonder why they seem unable to make the connection. All I can see from here is a vista of devastation interrupted at intervals by the arses of ostriches.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-17472698

What rhymes with Cassandra...?

Of course we slurp. (There's probably already a drink called a Slurpee.)
Purple/Slurple is great.
I had gotten no farther than:

If you want a rhyme for April
You'll no more find it than a tapir'll.

I know you can invest word combinations that rhyme (sort of) with "orange," but you won't find them in a rhyming dictionary.

I have an old children's poem on the subject of these non-rhyming words:

LONELY WORDS

An orange is a lonely fruit.
.. And months are lonely too.
To be an orange or a month
.. means no one rhymes with you.

How sad if you are purple,
.. or silver, like a dime.
If that’s the case, my lonely friend,
.. you’ll never be a rhyme.

Every other word can boast
.. at least one rhyme, or several,
but if you are an orange...
.. you do not rhyme and never’ll.

You say that you’re a purple month?
.. Oh what an awful curse!
I love your orange, silver hair,
.. and yet you can’t be verse.

Let dictionary writers write
.. new words. Let’s start with forange:
a noun invented to supply
.. a word to rhyme with orange.

Make up rhymes for all of them!
.. Let’s face it. It’s a crime
for purple, silver, orange, month,
.. to go without a rhyme.

That's a cracker, Rob.

'Lonely Words' is very good, Bob, but this isn't quite true:
"I know you can invest word combinations that rhyme (sort of) with "orange," but you won't find them in a rhyming dictionary."

My Penguin Rhyming Dictionary gives, for orange: binge, dinge, hinge, cringe, fringe, springe (small snare), singe, tinge, whinge, swinge, twinge, unhinge, challenge, impinge, syringe, infringe, scavenge and lozenge.

But nothing rhymes with 'film'!

Jayne