The ode less travelled: unlocking the poet within (54 page)
8
A
dithyramb
is a kind of wild choral hymn (usually to Dionysus, the Greek God of wine–Bacchus to the Romans). It now often refers to any rather overblown, uncontrolled verse style.
9
Someone told me they saw a grave to one John Longbottom, who died at the age of ten. His gravestone read
ars longa, vita brevis
: a rude epitaph for a churchyard, but witty. Works especially well if you remember that in Latin the ‘s’ is always
unvoiced
…
10
I don’t want you to go thinking that this is the usual kind of conversation I have, least of all my friends.
11
Not
triplets
, which are three-line groups that rhyme with each other
aaa
,
bbb
etc.
12
In its strictest form, the word
Sestina
should also appear in the
envoi
. Crazy, huh?
13
Anthony Holden, in
The Wit in the Dungeon
, his masterly biography of Leigh Hunt, has this to say about the incident: ‘Whether or not Carlyle’s crusty old wife actually had given Hunt a kiss, let alone leapt from her chair to do so, we will never know; no such unlikely moment is documented in any of the relevant parties’ letters or journals.’
14
See if you can get hold of ‘A Platonic Blow’ for example.
15
I mean
exotic
in its original sense of ‘from far away’ not in the travel brochure sense.
16
Cracked
them! Coconuts, you see. And china plates. Cracked them! Ho, ho. No but really, ho
ho
.
17
A manila envelope rhyme?
18
Jewish readers may wonder why Milton is writing about the
tefillin
: ‘phylacteries’ here actually refer to religious trinkets used by Presbyterians, whose intolerance the sonnet attacks.
Presbyterians
, as you may know although Milton probably did not, is an anagram of
Britney Spears
.
19
The full manifesto can be read at: http://www2.uol.com.br/augustodecampos/concretepoet.htm
20
Save the rich-rhyme
sylva
of course…
1
After all, a large bowl of strawberry trifle or a buzzing electric dildo would make most people look twice…
2
Though also a great danger that such demotic diction dates even more rapidly than old-fashioned ‘poetical’ language.
Table of Contents
How to Read this Book. Three Golden Rules
I How We Speak. Meet Metre. The Great Iamb. The Iambic Pentameter. Poetry Exercises 1 & 2
III More Metres: Four Beats to the Line. Mixed Feet. Poetry Exercise 5
V Anglo-Saxon Attitudes. Poetry Exercise 7 . Sprung Rhythm.
VI Syllabic Verse. Poetry Exercises 8 & 9 : Coleridge’s ‘ Lesson for a Boy ’.
I The Basic Categories of Rhyme. Partial Rhymes. Feminine and Triple Rhymes. Rich Rhyme.
I The Stanza. What is Form and Why Bother with It?
III The Ballad. Poetry Exercise 12
IV Heroic Verse. Poetry Exercise 13
V The Ode: Sapphic, Pindaric, Horatian, The Lyric Ode, Anacreontics.
IX Exotic Forms: Haiku, Senryu, Tanka. Ghazal. Luc Bat. Tanaga. Poetry Exercise 18
XI Shaped Verse. Pattern Poems. Silly, Silly Forms. Acrostics. Poetry Exercise 20
I The Whale. The Cat and the Act. Madeline. Diction. Being Alert to Language.