tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post473278100123410025..comments2024-01-24T06:50:01.683-06:00Comments on Samizdat Blog: "Imagine That Happening Again in Poetry": The Future and History of RhymeArchambeauhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17273511539172747550noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-39530885683088833172013-12-05T13:37:56.321-06:002013-12-05T13:37:56.321-06:00I see what you mean, and Kent Johnson contacted me...I see what you mean, and Kent Johnson contacted me with a similar observation. Madrid addresses just this point in the manuscript, mentioning Hugh Kenner's argument along these lines. Well worth a look!Archambeauhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17273511539172747550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-12099076688239777122013-12-05T07:38:51.781-06:002013-12-05T07:38:51.781-06:00That's very interesting and is a great instanc...That's very interesting and is a great instance of change naturally occurring in poetry even in the absence of theory. A device exploited well by one generation comes to be associated with them and then avoided. <br /><br />The major qualification I'd want to make to this precis history of rhyme concerns the Augustans, I am perfectly convinced that their rhymes were very often meant to be noticed (though admittedly only as part of a wider pyrotechnic display of verse handling) and were not intended narcotically or lullingly but on the contrary to provoke attention. <br /><br />Fair Tresses Man's Imperial Race insnare,<br />And Beauty draws us with a single Hair.<br /><br />Whether the Nymph shall break Diana's Law, <br />Or some frail China Jar receive a Flaw,<br />Or stain her Honour, or her new Brocade,<br />Forget her Pray'rs, or miss a Masquerade,<br /><br />Rufa, whose eye quick-glancing o'er the Park,<br />Attracts each light gay meteor of a Spark,<br />Agrees as ill with Rufa studying Locke,<br />As Sappho's diamonds with her dirty smock;<br />Or Sappho at her toilet's greasy task,<br />With Sappho fragrant at an evening Masque:<br /><br />Pope surely wants us to appreciate these rhymes, only not for mere semantic parallelism, but sometimes for their semantic incongruity (e.g. Locke, smock), and mostly for rather more nuanced relationships between the rhyming terms (e.g. law is basically in contrast to flaw, but then again it's only in the context of laws that we can call things flaws, so in a Pauline sense law does indeed give birth to flaw....).<br />Michael Peveretthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17090710369630916194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-17137992244045275042013-11-20T09:04:36.338-06:002013-11-20T09:04:36.338-06:00I found it on Proquest Dissertation and Theses, if...I found it on Proquest Dissertation and Theses, if you have a library that has a subscription. You might try emailing the author, too. It's a joy to read and, as Archambeau points out above, the introduction is a great concise summary of how we got to here. ~Robertrstrongstertesthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00633435740801468666noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-16933239087184027072013-11-19T10:31:02.805-06:002013-11-19T10:31:02.805-06:00Dana Gioia is also a big supporter of rhyme.Dana Gioia is also a big supporter of rhyme.Shelleyhttp://dustbowlstory.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-83592169562953562802013-11-19T06:24:20.624-06:002013-11-19T06:24:20.624-06:00Has Anthony published his dissertation? I want to ...Has Anthony published his dissertation? I want to read it!Andrew Shieldshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-33683824219570824592013-11-18T10:10:10.855-06:002013-11-18T10:10:10.855-06:00Robert Strong writes:
Thanks for the shout. The p...Robert Strong writes:<br />Thanks for the shout. The panel I was on was called “Reclaiming a Barbarous Artifice: Creative Research into the Work of Rhyme” and included our curator Meredith Neuman (Early Americanist), Melissa Range (poet, researcher), and Mickle Maher (playwright, Theater Oobleck). It was a thrilling and providential sequence to hear those folks talk on rhyme, to find Madrid sitting in our audience as I began to cite his incisive reading of Augustan rhyme as the best thing I’d read to help me think about the hip-hop-trained-poetry-ear, and then to transition to the excellent Robbins panel.<br /><br />And thanks for turning me to Eminem’s multiple oranges here. I found a short annoying and inspiring clip of him laying them out, as well as talking about thinking about words all day and reading the dictionary as a kid:<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kQBVneC30o<br /><br />Let me unpack the “that” a bit, for your readers, in my "Imagine that happening again in poetry.” Madrid shows how the Augustans preferred the “spell” of rhyme, its narcotic effect, to the “acrobatics” of highlighting semantic links with rhyme. Today, the hip hop audience is directly seeking the “spell” of rhymes that are connected by meaning, inference, local knowledge, etc. Acrobatics is, in large part, what casts the spell in hip hop. The members of this audience have had their ears trained to listen in a way-- wide-open and wonderfully loose-- that almost allows for a synaesthesia of music and meaning in rhyme.<br /><br />There is that moment when the freestyle rapper hits a masterful rhyme, the one that makes the music but also punctuates the argument with a deathblow (or love seal) of meaning—and the audience lets out a collective and audible noise of appreciation and disbelief. I like imagining THAT happening in poetry again. Not only that masterful play, but also that attuned and gut reaction. <br /><br />I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m pretty sure “I replace the mirror with Rorschach blots. / Think some Arnold Horshack thoughts” would pull noise from my gut if I first heard it in a poetry reading. And not only because of the rhyme we can isolate. I think you or another Q&A questioner had an exchange with Melissa Range about how no rhyme works separate from all the words that precede it; Range also spoke us a line from A.E. Stallings’ “Presto Manifesto”: “There are no tired rhymes. . . . Rhymes are not predictable unless lines are.”<br /><br />Robbins doesn’t just pull off a great rhyme that flexes with pop-psycho-tv-therapy connective tissue (the sweathogs certainly needed therapy, Horshack certainly would have his hand up with the first ready Rorschach answer). But the rest of the first two lines of this quatrain turns our attention, and the tv, ON for that rhyme:<br /><br />Black people can’t swim. Yes we can.<br />The giant Kool-Aid pitcher doesn’t love<br />a wall. I replace the mirror with Rorschach blots.<br />Think some Arnold Horshack thoughts.<br /><br />Thanks for the fantastic panel and thoughtful post. I hope no one ruins it for themselves by now watching Horshack audition to be Rorschach of other fame:<br />http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/3e43dd80c3/horschack-rorschach<br />rstrongstertesthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00633435740801468666noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8052308.post-9597770241358775472013-11-16T15:21:40.236-06:002013-11-16T15:21:40.236-06:00I like to use thought rhyme, a technique popular i...I like to use thought rhyme, a technique popular in Jewish poetry in the Bible. The first line will express a concept, and the second will repeat the same concept, express the opposite concept, or build on the concept. Surazeushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03649381910384416079noreply@blogger.com