Gary... for better or worse, and its probably worse...
now I'm off to write a modern poem without a rhythm scheme....
HYPERPOEM
QUESTA FIAMMA (TERZA RIMA)
Questa fiamma staria senza più scosse..
Italian or Latin, multiligual. Ouch ya!
I could perhaps write parts in Welsh or make it Scotsy,
but writing Welsh grammaticallyıs in the future
for me, and Iım an optimist. Iıd really rather
write English. But Iıve promised Latin. Prima Luce
the soldiers tackled Vercingetorix. My father
taught me my Latin, but I donıt intend to speak
in it, or copy lines from Vergil: some palaver.
Italian? Latin? French or Spanish? Hebrew? Greek?
Iıve had enough of showing off in Terza Rima
already. Sorry, Gary, that my poemıs so weak.
And the unwritten stanza starts its rhyme with: dreamer,
the complex rhyme scheme a, b, a, then c, d, c
until youıve had a lot of practice, tends to seem a
n apalling muddle. Dante used it, didnıt he,
for page on page of epic verse, canto on canto.
Eliot, who thought it relevant to Mr P,
quoted from Dante to begin his Prufrock panto.
Gary, it sounded so smart saying I would take
Italian for the hyperpoem. What I can do
ıs admit my failings to you honestly, and make
an exit and apology, and make you all see
that six-beat triple-rhyming stanzas make heads ache
and multi-lingual verse on top would give you palsy.
Iıve recently been arguing that poems need rhythm,
and any Pennine poet who was feeling bolshy
could argue from this piece of doggerel Iıve given
that rhyhthm can exist without it being poetry.
I hope I donıt meet TS Eliot in heaven.
Sally Evans
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