I'm reading Stephen Fry's "The Ode Less Travelled", which is poetry writing
for, not dummies, but smart people who want to learn about prosody. If you
already know about prosody it's still a fun read and Fry's illustrative
examples (from Chaucer to MC Hammer!) are good. And I'm doing the exercises,
distasteful though some of them are (dactylic hexameter about cows!
Tetrameter about television!). Anyway today's exercise was to imagine
oneself as a Victorian poet and write a rhyming poem to commemorate the Tay
bridge disaster (girders collapse, train goes down in a howling storm) that
was the subject of a truly dreadful poem by William (William?) McGonagall. I
thought the results were interesting:
Were they dozing in their seats?
Did they shiver at the gale?
Were children snuggled up on mothers laps
Not dreaming that the new bridge would collapse,
That Britain's hopes could fail,
Flung screaming down to die?
Did anybody lie
For saving face or greed
Or were that seventy-five, in howling terror,
Done in by plain bad luck and human error?
An iron horse can't bleed.
A bridge, when sick, won't grumble
Refuse to eat, or stumble
Or quail at sleet and thunder,
Or show us where her buttresses are missing
Until, with shrieking wheels and steampipes hissing
A heavy train goes under.
Were we dozing in our seats?
Hardly my usual mode, is it?
(If this were more than an exercise I wouldn't be happy with it -- in
particular, the order of the ideas -- but I can't be bothered to do any more
with it.)
I wouldn't say it's more difficult to write well in this manner than in
unrhymed or free verse. The challenges are different, that's all. But it is
a mode that really lends itself to writing badly!
Janet
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Janet Jackson
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www.proximity.webhop.net
www.myspace.com/poetjj
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