[Holly Martins]

I was going through some old poetry info I'd downloaded and came across something I don't remember seeing before: apocopated rhyme - rhyming a line end with a penultimate syllable. I've had a go but I'm sure you could do much better.


PULLING FACES

I thought her text was hurtful -
crushing, distant, curt;
when all I’d been was truthful,
the dumb caprice of youth!

And now there’s only coldness
in place of her to hold -
withdrawn, the cheerful smilies,
she’d tapped out by the mile.

[basil ransome-davies]

EH?

My destiny was distant,
Occluded by a mist,
Or else I'd had a skinful
At Cohen's Irish Inn.

I felt I was repeating
A painting by Magritte.
No sentiment came easy;
I'd lost my loving squeeze.

I turned to travel homewards,
But did I live in Rome?
Much more likely-seeming
I inhabited a dream.

[Holly Martins]

Nice one, Basil - but is that a typo in L6?

[basil ransome-davies]

Now corrected. Thank you. This kind of stuff can be addictive, it rolls out so easily, but I see it as one of those useful limbering-up exercises for the craft.

[John Whitworth]

Gavin Ewart wrote a poem which I cannot find. It goes something like this:

When a cat-flea bit my scrotum,
My cock shot up like a totem-pole,
dada dada Death's dark portal,
Dada dada da my immortal soul...

There's more but I can't remember it. The rhyme scheme is clear, but what is it called?

[A. E. Stallings]

The finest poem I know that employs this kind of rhyme is Merrill's http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch....html?id=15015"The Octopus."

[Maryann Corbett]

Alicia, thank you for pointing us to the Merrill! I think I've just learned that I have to read Merrill's line-ends much more carefully. In the admixture of half-rhymes, rhymes on unstressed syllables, and uncertainty about where a syllable ends (does -chief really match drift?) I utterly and completely missed this sonic technique in this poem. A heads up for me!

[basil ransome-davies]

Merrill is fluid & opportunistic, at home with pararhyme, so his method appears free from wilful contrivance. At least he pictures his octopus as more than just 'sinister', or an off-the-shelf symbol for something threatening and 'orrible (cf. Frank Norris & schlock undersea movies), & making the bridge to Hindu gods & rituals is a nice piece of wit.

[George Simmers]

The poet cried: “Look! Bluebells glistening?
And are those fairy footsteps? Do listen!”
But his eight-year-old daughter
Replied with a snort:
“Eh? Dad, are you taking the piss?”

[Orwn Acra]

Finally! An answer to a question I posed before, featuring the very poem John mentions. Here is the thread:

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showth...ht=gavin+ewart

And isn't that Merrill poem a parody of Swinburne? Or am I confused?