Writing Poetry

A friend quoted to me a remark of Emerson's on the difficulties of writing rhymed poetry. Emerson spoke of a poet who had thought up a "beautiful line" about stars, only to find he couldn't think of any good rhyme for "stars", with the result that his poem had to be abandoned.
I do not accept Emerson's difficulty in finding a rhyme for "stars" (see end), though his point is a fair one.Of course, the problem can always be avoided by writing "vers libre", with neither rhymes nor scansion (what one literary critic described to me as "prose that doesn't reach the right-hand margin"), but it is obvious that any clumsy, contrived or unsuitable rhyme kills a serious poem stone-dead: bathos is fatal. Even great poets are guilty of dreadful lapses at times. Consider the following from the first verse of Wordsworth's "Simon Lee", about an aged man:-

"Of years he has upon his back
No doubt a burden weighty
He says he is three score and ten
But others say he's eighty"

This can hardly fail to raise a smile, and as a result the serious message of the poem, which is intended to evoke sympathy for the old man's difficulties, is irretrievably lost.

In writing comic verse, by contrast, the more improbable or contrived the rhymes, the better, since ridiculous rhymes can add greatly to the humorous effect. For Exhibit 2, here is the opening of "Lord Roehampton", by Hilaire Belloc:-

"During the late election, Lord
Roehampton strained a vocal chord
By shouting very loud and high
To lots and lots of people, why
The Budget, in his own opin-
-ion should not be allowed to win"

You can't get much more contrived than this, but as comic writing it is highly effective. Furthermore, the scansion is perfect and the poet is clearly in total command of his material: he has composed it all quite deliberately.

One doesn't need to be a great poet to know the answer to Emerson's problem, which is simply this: if a line is going to end in a weak or contrived rhyme, then the weak line must be placed first, not second. We don't have to investigate major literary works to find that natural poets know this by instinct. Take the example of this anonymous Border Ballad from the 15th century, which tells of how Henry Percy of Northumberland (Shakespeare's Harry Hotspur) rides forth from his stronghold at Newcastle to challenge the Scots raiders under Earl Douglas:-

"But oh, how pale his lady looked
Frae off the castle wall
When down before the Scottish spears
She saw proud Percy fall"

The second line is actually rather weak, but you don't notice, because the verse builds up to a climax with the word "fall". If you recite it out, as would originally have been the case, then you can anticipate the final word coming, with sinister effect.

Take an example from pop music. There are few really striking rhymes for "bridge", but Chuck Berry had no problem coping with this in "Memphis Tennessee":-

"Her home is on the south side, high up on a ridge,
Round a half a mile from the Mississippi bridge"

Nobody would pretend that this is great poetry, but think how feeble and contrived it would be if "ridge" had been used in the second line of the couplet rather than the first!

The use of proper nouns can be effective if they fit naturally and provide a suitable climax at the end of a line. As an example, here is the chorus of an old Scottish song about the whaling ships of the 19th century, operating out of ports like Peterhead and Dundee:-

"The wind is in the quarter, the engine's burning free,
There's not another whaler that sails out from Dundee
Can beat the old "Balaena"; she needs no trial runs,
And will challenge all, both great and small,
From Dundee to St. John's."

Here we have two rather weak rhymes, concealed by each being placed first, with two place-names used to provide a climax. ("St. John's" comes as a surprise: it was the port in Newfoundland where the whalers called in on their way up to the icy waters west of Greenland)


To finally illustrate the point, and refute Emerson's case of the lack of any really good rhyme for "stars", I offer the following two and a half line of impromptu, meaning nothing in particular:-

"..... and still she hears
In distant echo through her prison bars
Ancient eternal music of the stars"

"Bars" remains a weak rhyme for "stars", but its weakness has been concealed.

Another Clerihew

This was inspired by the recent scare about large numbers of immigrants from Romania coming to Britain:-

"Count Dracula (whose real name was Vlad)
Was justly considered quite mad
For taking the decision to remain here
When he might have gone home to Transylvania"

(Index under:   Immigrants; unwelcome)

An ongoing collection of my clerihews can be found on an earlier entry

A Letter

The letter had fallen on the mat address side down. He didn’t bother to turn it over before ripping it open with his finger. Inside was a single sheet of paper. There was no sender‘s address at the top, and the writing was in careful block capitals. “Mister Williams”, he read. But this wasn’t him: Mr Williams was the previous occupant of the house. Really the man should have informed the Post Office of his change of address, not to mention telling his correspondents!

“Mister Williams: you still haven’t paid us the ten thousand. We will be sending people round to collect it”

He read the message three times, by which time he was shaking. What had this man Williams been involved in? He knew nothing about him at all. He hadn’t even met him. The property had been vacant when he moved in; the agent had shown him round an empty house. Now Williams’s misdeeds, whatever they might have been, were catching up. That must have been why he’d left, without a forwarding address. And here HE was, trapped and helpless, having to answer for someone else! Cold crawled up his spine. He could envisage what would happen. A couple of thugs would come knocking on the door: he’d try to explain to them that he wasn’t Williams, but they wouldn’t believe him, and ……….. No; he couldn’t bear even to imagine it.

For the first time, he turned over the envelope. On the front was just the single word “Williams”, again in capitals. There was no address, and no stamp. Suddenly, the implications of this dawned upon him. It had been delivered by hand! One of THEM had pushed it through his letterbox! This meant that, almost certainly, they were watching his house even now! There wasn’t a moment to be lost! He must escape! Without even bothering to pick up his coat, he ran to the kitchen door and outside to the rear garden, with some thought of getting away through the back hedge. But already he was too late! There was a figure, dark under the shadow of the trees, coming round the corner of the house and advancing towards him.

He stood there, trembling and quite incapable of movement, as time froze, and then the figure spoke.
“Morning, Nigel! How are you?”
“Michael! Oh, thank goodness! You can’t imagine how relieved I am that it’s you! Come on in! But it was a rotten trick to play on me, with that letter! You know how nervous I am!”
“What trick? What letter?”
The cold panicky feeling started to crawl up him again, but at least he wasn’t isolated and on his own any more. “I got a letter just now, threatening me. Or, not exactly me, but …… Wait; I’ll get it and show you”.

But the letter wasn’t there. He scrabbled around ineffectually, with increasing confusion, then finally said, lamely, “I don’t seem to be able to find it. But it was here”.
“That’s all right, Nigel”, said Michael. “I am your doctor, and I quite understand”. Yes indeed: it was becoming more complex and fascinating by the day, the case of Nigel Williams.

Sanctuary Wood, Ypres: School Visits

How can they understand a war poem? How can we?
Wars were far away and long ago
And nothing seen on television ever really happened.
Now the woods are full of children
Running through the muddy trenches
Dodging round the water-filled craters
Gawping at, or completely failing to notice
The occasional unexploded shell
And squeaking when their nice new jeans
(Fashionably ragged and torn at the knee)
Are stained with filth in the communications tunnel.

Below the woods the fields are grey with mist
Shrouding the view to the sinister places
The Menin road, and up to Passchendaele,
Behind us, Messines Ridge and Plugstreet. The children
Have been told, but already they’ve forgotten
And soon they’ll be off for hamburger and chips
(They’re looking forward to their succulent Belgian chips)
And leave the trenches and the shattered stumps
The rusty barbed wire and all the iron harvest of war
And arching over all, the chestnut trees
- None more than seventy years old
But sprouting strongly, because well fertilised
By someone who in happier circumstances
Might have married my grandmother
Or yours

A SOLDIER
OF THE GREAT WAR
KNOWN UNTO GOD

The Wizard is worried

When Udlotwin called on me the other day he looked so distraught and haggard that I barely recognized him. I'd never seen him like that before.

I should explain that Udlotwin (that's not the name most people know him by, of course) is a wizard. We'd been friends for years. I've often wondered why he took to me, since he told me very early on that I had no gift for magic whatsoever. Perhaps that might be why he liked me: other people might have pestered him to teach them some magic, or at least demonstrate some; by I accepted what he said and never bothered him further on the subject.
   He slumped into a chair and begged for a glass of water. When he'd drunk this, and was looking a little better, I obviously asked him what the trouble was.
   "Did you ever meet Geoffrey Dakin?" he asked me.
   "No,but I seem to remember your telling me about him. He wanted to become a magician, you said".
   "Yes, he did. And he had some of the necessary ability; just a little. That was the trouble: he'd have done better to keep well away. That's what I advised him, but he didn't listen. When I heard he'd died suddenly, with no obvious physical symptoms, I immediately suspected the worst. I managed to get into his flat,and my worst fears were confirmed".
   "Why, what did you find?"
   "Enough to show me that he'd being trying out some very risky ideas; fortunately without any success. But then I found something really important. To a layman it might have seemed no more than a simple wooden fruit-bowl; but I knew what it was: a Horn of Plenty. I wondered where on earth he could have got it".
   "What's a Horn of Plenty?"
   "A famous magical device! Things that are placed inside it multiply, and go on multiplying".
   "You mean if I put some money in, more and more money would come out?"
   "That's just what a layman would think, and probably what poor Geoffrey did think. But there's much more to it than that. A Horn of Plenty is basically a machine, and it works just like any other machine. It won't function without an input of energy; but it's a special kind of energy, which it takes from the magician. Even I would find it exhausting. You, as it happens, don't possess any of this energy. Geoffrey had some, but not nearly enough for this task. I guessed that was what killed him - though of course it might have been something different; something much more sinister. I won't go into that".
   "So what did you do?"
   "I took the Horn away. I couldn't leave it lying about: you never know who might get their hands on it. But just carrying it for any length of time would tire me out. I needed somewhere safe to hide it. So I cast around until I located a Doorway".
   "A Doorway? What's that?"
   "It's an entrance to a different world: a different universe. It'd be easiest for you to understand if you think in terms of multiple dimensions. This particular Doorway appeared to be just a hollow tree. I thought it might be safe to hide the Horn there. So I opened the Doorway".
   "And what did you find there?"
   "Initially, nothing much. A great heap of stones was completely blocking the other side. But I sensed that something, or someone, was there. And at that same moment it sensed me. A picture formed in my brain of a monstrous being, something like an enormous gorilla, but with a face like no creature of this world, ferociously shaking the bars of a cage. And its voice was yelling at me. "Let me out!" it shouted, "Let me out!" And it knew I had the power to release it, and I knew that was what must be prevented at all costs.
   "It was so overwhelming that I utterly lost control of my mind. I collapsed. I've no idea what happened next. When I recovered consciousness, I found myself lying on the grass in a strange park I'd never seem before. A well-meaning passer-by asked me if I was all right, and helped me to my feet. I was so weak I could hardly stand. And the Horn of Plenty was gone.
   "What had happened? Had I dropped it somewhere? Worst of all, had I perhaps left it beyond the Doorway, where that ..... that THING ...... could get hold of it?

"What am I going to do now?"

Puzzles

I came away from the auction with a small box of Chinese bric-a-brac, which I had bid for because I liked the look of a piece of jade which formed one of the items. When I got it home, however, the jade turned out on closer inspection to be obviously modern, and not even very good quality at that; and I was relieved I hadn’t bid more. 
   Most of the other items in the box were frankly rubbish, but one or two attracted a second glance, if only to try to convince myself that my money hadn‘t been completely wasted. There was a carving in dark wood, beneath a glass dome smaller than a child’s fist, consisting of a man in a robe seated at a table. There was a teapot and a cup detached from the main carving and lying loose: probably the carving had been broken, but somehow it reminded me of those cheap little toys where you have to manoeuvre ball-bearings through a maze, or into slots in a picture. I even attempted to shake the dome to get these objects back onto the table, but failed miserably and gave up after a few goes. 
   At the bottom of the box was a medallion the size of a coin, on a chain. There were characters I couldn’t read on one side of it, and it surprised me, because I didn’t think it was the sort of thing the Chinese went in for. I suspected it wasn’t really Chinese at all, and I certainly didn’t find it at all attractive, but in an idle moment I hung it round my neck.
   For some reason, I suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to return to the game, or whatever it was, under the glass dome. I shook it, and it took very little time or effort to get the cup and teapot into their right places on the table; but somehow they weren’t tiny any more: the whole carving had expanded until it was life-size, and I was right there beside it, watching. And the man in the robe was alive and moving. I watched as he poured himself a cup of tea, and then picked it up to drink it. And I realised that he mustn’t drink it, because the tea was poisoned; and I tried to shout at him not to, but no sound came out.The poison must have been very potent, because he collapsed almost immediately. And he realised what had happened to him, because he was able to lift his head from the table to look directly up at me, and his look said,
“YOU DID IT!”

Fear

I found myself on the outskirts of a large burial-ground. The light was murky. Some distance away, with her back to me, a young girl in a red dress was laying flowers on a grave. Closer to me, but somehow much less distinct, was another figure, who seemed to be a woman in beige, who was watching the girl. I was seized with a terrible fear that they would notice me and turn round, and I would find they had the faces of werewolves; or even worse, they would have no faces at all. I decided to tiptoe quietly away. The figures did not move, and I realised the scene was only a picture. But then I discovered I could not move either, and that I was part of the picture too.