[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?

[Jill Domschot]

Mary, of course it's relevant. Tennyson writes lovely, romantic chiasms.

John, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around yours. If it's chiastic in construct as many biblical passages are, I'm missing it. But then I'm really, really tired right now.

[Martin Elster]

Originally Posted by Jill Domschot

John, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around yours. If it's chiastic in construct as many biblical passages are, I'm missing it.

I'm not going to analyze the content of John's sonnet, which is wonderful, but I will say that the rhyme scheme is definitely a chiasmus.

Here is a stanza of a poem I recently posted, which has a chiastic rhyme scheme, but two parallel phrases that go against it.

**While round the baseball field a fence
keeps players in and others from the game,
****a fence called “Being tame”
keeps Wilbur near and me from getting tense.

Martin

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

Here is part of a longer piece just published at Umbrella. It concerns the Polish tradition of constructing and destroying an effigy of Pilate on Good Fridays. It is chiastic in rhyme scheme and line length.

Below, the village boys have stuffed you full of straw
and soon, they’ll cheer and take you from the street to church,
’though not to pray. The belfry’s where you’ll go
and once you’re there, they’ll curse your name and throw
you down, back to the street. Then rooks will drop and perch
upon your eye and clack around your shattered jaw.

Up here, I’ll watch it all. I’ll see them vie to take
what’s left of you and drag it down the riverbank.
They’ll rip your body, bit by battered bit,
and I’ll rejoice (the perfect hypocrite);
and when they’ve tossed each piece to where the last one sank
I’ll watch them kneel and cross themselves for Jesu’s sake.

[Jan D. Hodge]

At least a decade before John Pratt "invented" the "chiastic sonnet," I wrote the following. I know of no prior example of the structure, but am too modest to assume I "invented" it, and assume that one must exist somewhere.

..................In Memory: Basilio C. Molina

........ Ten thousand miles we'd come, and just in time
........ to watch him die--this father to my wife
........ I know so slightly. How strange it is to watch:
........ in the room where the old man lies past hurt
........ children play cards. I have so much to learn.
........ Watching their game, I think hard of the child
........ we left at home so that she could be schooled
........ in wood shop, algebra, and French--schooled
........ in kinder things than death. Yet could a child
........ encounter death more kindly?
........encounter death more kindly?...Then I learn
........ how deeply quiet words can sometimes hurt.
........ “Do you want anything?” I ask, and watch
........ as he looks first at me, then at my wife:
........ “I want to see your daughter one last time.”

And I remember reading decades ago a poem by a relatively minor 17th or 18 century poet with a rhyme scheme of:abcdefghijklmmlkjihgfedcba. {I forget exactly how long it was, but it seemed interminable, and the rhymes were neither immediately apparent nor very effective.}