[Jill Domschot]

It's raining and cloudy in NM, and my brain is getting soggy. Would anybody care to write some clever chiasms? Mike Todd wrote this on another board: "We say we have no time to write when our time isn't worth writing about."
Pope was famous for them. Oh, for heaven's sake; I can't find my copy of "Rape of the Lock." I was going to find a good one in IP. Sor Juana used them quite frequently in her sonnets. Keats, of course, has his famous one, and Frost used them, as well.
I'm not very clever, but if somebody thinks of a good one, it might inspire me.

[Jill Domschot]

All right, so I started this ridiculous thread before I had to run off and do a million things. Yes, I realize how absurd it is, now. I couldn't think of a good chiasm to save my life.

[Roger Slater]

If you just give us a few examples from the poets you mentioned, perhaps some of us will try to run with this. But I'm not sure what you are asking for so I'm not sure whether I can do it or not.

[Jill Domschot]

What happened to my post? What, what? Does this site kick you off if you're logged on too long?

I had written an example by Dr. Samuel Johnson:
"Your manuscript is both good and original;
but the part that is good is not original,
and the part that is original is not good."

And a couple by Sor Juana from her Hombres Necios:
"Or which is more to be blamed--
though both will have cause for chagrin:
the woman who sins for money
or the man who pays money to sin?

So why are you men all so stunned
at the thought you're all guilty alike?
Either like them for what you've made them
or make of them what you can like."

They are simply lines that mirror each other and can be clever and funny. They also make language interesting. I put a few in the poem I just posted -- not good ones, perhaps, but some of the lines do mirror each other.

[Mary Meriam]

This may not be relevant to your thread, Jill, but I fell in love with this poem today. It's ghazal influenced.


Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font;
The firefly wakens, waken thou with me.

Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.

Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts, in me.

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake.
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

~~~~~~

Ok, I just thought of two chiasmus from my own work:

The Oak Tree Owl of Owl Creek Cove

No one is Mary, Mary is no one


Here's someone who invented the Chiastic Sonnet.
http://www.johnpratt.com/items/poetry/index.html

And here's some help from Dr. Mardy:
http://www.drmardy.com/chiasmus/types.shtml

[John Whitworth]

OK. Here's a Chiastic Sonnet. If it doesn'tmake sense that shows a. how Modernist, or even Post-Modernist, I have become b. the active reader makes his own sense. it was originally inspired by the moreimpanetrable poetry of Peter Porter, God bless him, and who borrowed my Porter book and DIDN'T GIVE IT BACK.

Thou verse thief, pincher of my Porter,
No longer steal the name of mate
Who sinned the sin he didn't oughter.
I curse thee, thee excoriate.

That's not the sonnet but it contains some fine chiasms and also some choice archaisms to tie it to another thread. Here is the sonnet.

Chiastic Sonnet

Just when the doctors dreamed they might be winning
A war on several fronts with those diseases
That threaten my longevity, the squeeze is
Renewed in spades. My letterbox starts grinning.
Time to shut up the chateau, tell the servants
Just how they can all fuck off. Our hero grew
From zero, now he’s fingered for a coshing.
I fear it’s time to take in people’s washing,
To meditate on memories of you
And get a book religion's strict observance.
I'm an old tart on tour. I’ve left off binning
Brochures again (though past it now, by Jesus)
So what do you like? Is it sights or sands or skis? Is
The Great Pyramid more than money-spinning?