Thread: How it's done
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Unread 07-25-2001, 08:38 AM
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R. S. Gwynn R. S. Gwynn is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Beaumont, TX
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Adam asks a couple of good questions which I'll address:

On the matter of rhymes, I have to trust my own ear, regionally imperfect though it may be. I'll admit that Tim's reference to my "sang/thing" rhyme caught me in my cowboy boots, but it gets a good laugh when I read the poem and emphasize the absurdity of the rhyme. And yes, "spaniel" and "manual" are elided to more or less exact rhymes in my pronunciation. Regional accent has a lot to do with rhyme (Burns, Pope's "join/line" rhymes, etc.) and also quite a bit to do with syllable-counting in meter. I am teaching Frost right now, and I have to hear his voice say "flah" for "flower" to realize that he usually treats it as a one-syllable word. Of course, an earlier poet would have shortened it to "flow'r" if necessary, but we aren't allowed to commit the syn of cope, or if we do commit it we aren't allowed to use the apostrophe.

As for the matter of my writing in form, I can only say that I do it because I think I do it well. If I played tennis well, I would be foolish to give it up for golf, which I don't play well at all (actually I play neither very well). If I could write free verse well, I would write free verse. I did write quite a bit of free verse in earlier years (there's some in The Drive-In), but I found that my interests lay elsewhere. Since I don't find writing in form limiting in any way, I have continued to write in this manner. I realize that this is not a very satisfactory answer and says very little about the virtues of rhyme and meter in general. For me, this has always been a personal matter based on what I am most comfortable doing. It's simply a matter of playing to one's strengths.

As for the difference in tone in "Galatea" versus the other poems, I've explained that the ten-year lapse may have contributed to that. Still, I knew that the sequence had reached an end when Psyche says, "Love conquers Thought." That would be the thesis sentence for the whole sequence, and absurd as her situation is it still holds out hope that we boys will grow up sooner or later.
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