Formal Complaint
 

Uncoupled

Why do bad poets tend to rhyme in couplets?
I like kids, but I wouldn't want octuplets.
Penning an epigram that doesn't rhyme
is juiceless, and one couplet is no crime,
but row on row of rhymes pair-bonded like geese
will have a reader itching for release.
Enjambment helps. When sentences don't pause
at the line's end, but leap from clause to clause
like joyful gibbons, swinging from branch to frond
to trunk to vine, they launch themselves beyond
pat landings. Hurtling through the air, suspended
on nothing but momentum, they've transcended
now for what's next. However, if you hope
to bring the couplet back, unless you're Pope
or Ogden Nash, the answer still is "Nope."


Revisions:
L1 "bad" was "hack"; then L1 was "Why do bad poets always choose rhymed couplets?"; "drawn" was "impelled"; then, the line was "Why are bad poets drawn to use rhymed couplets?"
L13 was "now for the future. Therefore, if you hope"

Cleverly done, Susan!
Your poem reminds me of Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” where he illustrates poetic misdemeanors for about 20 lines, then illustrates the corresponding excellences, ending:
     ”True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
      As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.
      ‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
      The sound must seem an echo to the sense.”

Yes, a clever coupling of Pope and Nash. Perhaps I should take offense, since I’m neither, and one of my most recent efforts was in rhymed couplets. But of course, I won’t. The geese and gibbons are delightful. I wonder, though, about “Therefore,” which connects logically with the first part of the poem, leaping back over the six and half lines on the saving graces of enjambments. I’d suggest “Still, though,” if “still” wasn’t already taken, but you get the idea.

Glenn, I did have Pope's "Essay on Criticism" in mind, and I thought it would be fun to critique rhymed couplets by using them. I initially was inspired by The Spectator's call for poems about a poetic form one loves or hates, but I did not finish the poem in time to enter the competition.

Carl, see my note above to Glenn on my inspiration. I was not aiming this critique at any individual. The argument is not that everyone who uses rhymed couplets is a bad poet, but that bad poets seem particularly drawn to the form. You were right about "Therefore" being a confusing connection, so I have tried changing it.

Susan

I'm confused by L2. What do octuplets have to do with couplets? And why is writing in couplets similar to having octuplets?

Roger, I was implying that both rhymed couplets and octuplets were too much of the same thing. Even a person who wants eight children doesn't want them all at once. A couplet at the end of a sonnet is no bad thing.

Susan

I understood that was your intent, but it seems like such a random example except for the happenstance of the rhyme. Since your only audience for this poem will be your fellow poets, in particular the ones who write in meter and rhyme, I think most of your readers will see it as purely rhyme driven. Perhaps I'm alone in this, but for me it sticks out in a way that is particularly troublesome in a poem that purports to lay down the law about poetic form and craft.

It didn't seem rhyme-driven to me. It seemed like a fun rhyme and a pretty good joke. But maybe you could make the first line "Why do bad poets overuse rhymed couplets?" to make the logic clearer?

Hi Susan,

As a general reader, I wouldn't go past the first line. As a member of our community, I dutifully read on.

The poem benefits from the irony of being written in the style that the narrator denounces in Williamsesque fashion (though Williams could have benefited from some of your humor).

Granted, it's clever. But the ending is a bit of a buh-dum-dum plotz indicating that you're ambition is for polite laughter from your select audience (people who are interested in the details of formal poetry and tend to be defensive about the whole thing).

I agree with Roger. You set up something that would work better with twins in line two. But that would blow the rhyme! On the other hand, couplets/octuplets is a really bad rhyme. Is that supposed to be a joke? ~,:^)

My main critique is that this is way too far into a comfortable corner, the definition of which, in that first line, turns me out.

Rick

Thanks for all of the responses.

Roger, I thought the exaggeration of "octuplets" would be funnier than a lower number and would suggest "excessive in number."

Mark, I am glad to hear that you saw the logic of the choice of "octuplets." "Overuse" suggests that a moderate use of rhymed couplets would be okay, but I am trying to suggest that being drawn to write in couplets seems a strange addiction to anyone but the bad writers themselves. I did concede that epigrams are an exception and that anyone who uses the form extremely well is also an exception.

Rick, satire always has an edge. If it doesn't offend some readers, it probably isn't doing its job. I meant the poem to have a suggestion of self-deprecation, since I am not Pope or Nash and yet am writing in couplets to show why it shouldn't be done. But also I am deliberately exaggerating for effect. "Twins" would definitely not work in L2. If there were just two lines, it would not have a chance to become tedious. "Couplets/octuplets" is an exact rhyme. What is bad about it? I am writing for other poets, who, I assume, have also had the experience of listening to excruciating doggerel from bad poets at some point. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Susan

One minor nit. . .
“Impelled” or “compelled” in L1?
I think of “impelled” as being given purpose and direction.
“Compelled” suggests action done because of one’s inability to do otherwise.

Why are bad poets impelled to use rhymed couplets?
I like kids, but I wouldn't want octuplets.

The problem with the second line is that the first line didn't ask why do poets use so many, or too many, rhymed couplets. Your first line doesn't frame the question in terms of quantity, but asks why they use rhymed couplets at all. That is the main reason L2 struck me as almost a non-sequitur. L2 simply does not follow logically from L1, in my opinion.

Leaving that aside, I also think the couplets/octuplets rhyme is weak. I know it is technically a perfect rhyme. But just because it qualifies as a perfect rhyme doesn't mean it's one that sounds good. It's subjective, I know, but I'd be slightly happier with "quintuplets", based on how it sounds. Also, when I first read the first two lines I found myself dividing eight by two to see if you were doing something along those line. If you'd used "quintuplets," being an odd number, I wouldn't have been drawn along that dead-end train of thought.

Glenn, no one is forcing the poets to write couplets, so "impelled" was the meaning I intended. But I have tried changing that to "drawn" to imply that it is an attraction, not a compulsion, at work. Anyone who has read any poetry at all knows that there are other options for rhyme schemes. I am curious about why rhymed couplets seem to be preferred the vast majority of times. I suspect that it is because it is the easiest and most obvious rhyme scheme, not requiring much planning, and that naive poets assume that emphasizing the rhymes by putting them close together shows that it is a "real" poem.

Roger, couplets always come in twos, so quintuplets, as an odd number, doesn't fit the context. Octuplets is the highest number of births at one time that I have heard of, so it sounds like a possible number.

Susan

Hi Susan,

The quality of rhyme has a second dimension after sonic exactness, doesn't it?

I didn't find your poem offensive, by the way.

Rick

It doesn't work as satire because it's the exact sort of poem it's purportedly satirizing... and isn't in on the joke.

Rick, rhyme works on many different levels at once. That is what I like about it.

Orwn, thanks for letting me in on the joke.

Susan

I didn't follow the logic between L1 and L2, either.

Would the poem work better with LL1-2 cut? Probably not. The enjambment seems to need an end-stopped preamble to set it off, and without an introductory joke of some sort, the poem feels even more preachy than it already is.

Invoking Pope and Nash sets the bar pretty high for wit and for surprising rhymes, and most readers won't be able to refrain from asking themselves if this poem is closer to the level of Pope and Nash or to the level of the bad poets sneered at in L1.

One of my pet peeves is when I write about one of my pet peeves and a reader expresses surprise that, of all the things to be annoyed about in the world, my subject is in my top ten. But on this particular week, I can't help wondering if this particular issue is worthy of my limited attention and capacity for empathy with the narrator's annoyance. (Yeah, yeah, I know, that sort of judgmental attitude is absolutely deadly to the enjoyment of light verse, and muses are capricious. Maybe tomorrow I'll be in a more receptive mood.)

Julie, humor either makes you laugh or it doesn't. It's good for the writer to know either way about which parts of light verse amuse and which don't. Often, it's a mixed call. I tried to make the first few couplets end-stopped to show how deadly that pattern could be if it continues very long, so that the reader would see how much better the lines flow when they aren't end-stopped. I guess I expected more readers to share my lack of sympathy for rhymed couplets, but tastes differ.

Susan

Hi Susan. I found getting through the first six lines a bit of a struggle - which could, cleverly, have been your intention - but one result of that is that the section on enjambment seemed greatly liberating. Lines 7 to 13 really swing. I enjoyed them.

Cheers

David

P.S. Nice title too.

David, yes, I meant the first six lines to feel like a slog, so that the readers would understand what I dislike about rhymed couplets.

I have tried one more version of L1 to see if I can hit the wry tone I am aiming for, while clarifying that the poets in question don't tend to stop at just one couplet.

Susan