[Susan McLean]

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"

[Glenn Wright]

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.”

[Carl Copeland]

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.

[Susan McLean]

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

[Roger Slater]

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

[Susan McLean]

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

[Orwn Acra]

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.

[Susan McLean]

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

[Julie Steiner]

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.)

[Susan McLean]

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